


Renegade

by pbjamas



Category: Naruto
Genre: Anbu Hatake Kakashi, Angst, Angst and Humor, Friendship, Gen, HAPPY ENDING BUT A LITTLE BIT OF SAD BEFORE THEN, Humor, Missing-Nin Hatake Kakashi, Multi, and plans to seduce orochimaru, i'll tag more characters as they show up, probably team 7 at the very least and tenzou and gai bc i love them, sort of based off a filler episode in the anime but not quite, unlikely teamup, write the fic you want to read i guess lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 41,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25058521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pbjamas/pseuds/pbjamas
Summary: There’s no question who killed the Sandaime.All of the ANBU there will testify that it was Kakashi, but what’s more damning is the hole in his chest from Kakashi’s chidori.---Kakashi's on the run and not having a great time, but at least he's got a cool Akatsuki robe.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Tsunade, Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Itachi, Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Obito
Comments: 213
Kudos: 525





	1. Good Times in Torture and Interrogation

**Author's Note:**

> Kakashi's young here, ANBU days.

There’s no question who killed the Sandaime.

All of the ANBU there will testify that it was Kakashi, but what’s more damning in the hole in his chest from Kakashi’s chidori.

The ROOT operatives with him had brought him to Danzou. “Welcome to ROOT,” he’d said, then pulled down Kakashi’s mask to etch a seal onto Kakashi’s tongue and another one on his neck before handing him back over to his operatives. Panic gnaws at Kakashi as the smooth path of the brush raises goosebumps over his skin. He tries to shunshin away, but three of them grab onto his arms. Immediately, he opens the Sharingan to face them head-on. He immobilizes two with a genjutsu—worth the chakra for the speed of the take-down—and flicks through the hand seals of an earth jutsu that swallows, twists, and breaks the ankles of three others. He bites his thumb and slams it against a wall as he runs. 

“Pakkun.” His pack runs beside him. “Throw off those ANBU.” Kakashi doesn’t worry about his dogs; they’ve beyond proven themselves, and they can always un-summon if they’re in serious trouble. He shunshins to the top of a nearby building, but before his feet can connect with the roof, the seal on his neck burns and there’s a piercing pain as everything short-circuits. He falls like a rock down a cliff, thumping on the roof before crashing in a limp heap on the ground. He’s pretty sure it’s something with his nerves; he can’t move and he can’t see. He can’t feel his limbs, either, only the burning of the seal, but he knows the ROOT nin are tying him up because of the rustling of his clothes as they yank his arms and legs and the _snnck_ of the rope as they wind it around them.

They drag him straight to Torture and Interrogation. “Here’s the one who killed the Sandaime.” Feeling starts to return in tingles just in time for his knees to be slammed to the ground, followed by the rest of him.

“Hatake Kakashi?” Nara Shikaku’s voice, guarded and unsure. “Are you insane?”

“There are witnesses and the wound fits his signature assassination jutsu. I was personally there, but too late to stop it.”

Shikaku sucks in a breath. He walks toward them, and from the position of his voice, Kakashi can tell he’s crouching down for a closer look. “What… what did you do to him?” Shikaku asks. Kakashi can only imagine the sight he must make, sprawled out like a corpse. As more feeling returns, he can tell they’ve taped his Sharingan shut and his other eyelid is fluttering and twitching. He’s fairly sure someone is holding his face off the ground by tugging on his hair. It’s chilly and they’ve taken his vest. Shikaku’s fingers are on Kakashi’s neck, feeling for a pulse. 

“Only a nerve disruption jutsu.” As the man speaks, he gives Kakashi’s leg a light kick. When he speaks again, his voice is full of contempt. “Hope he gets more than that, here, for killing the Sandaime. I-“ emotion chokes the man for a second. Either he’s a loyal ANBU, or Danzou’s recruited himself a great actor. “I want to see his killer brought to justice,” he finishes, yanking Kakashi’s hair. Kakashi can’t move, so he can’t press his lips against the whimper that escapes. “He’s to go to the most skilled interrogator and highest security area. Clean the blood off him so he can’t call his summons.” _What blood?_ Kakashi wonders, then remembers that he fell off a two story building. 

He is unpleasantly reminded of the fact about 3 minutes later when the feeling returns in full force. He’s definitely got a broken leg and ankle, and the fact that breathing makes him wish he were dead signals cracked or broken ribs. Now, he wonders if they decided to give him a beating on top of the fall, because he’s fairly sure falling doesn’t cause this much damage.

They are dragging him down a hallway now, and his vision is coming back in small spots. Nothing of interest to see, just cement walls. They get to a room where someone slaps a patch over his taped-up Sharingan then thoroughly soaks him with a pressure hose. He commends them for the patch over Obito’s eye; if it hadn’t been there, the tape keeping his eye shut surely would have come off with the water. 

Panic doesn’t start to set in until they’ve tied him to a chair and sliced off his mask with a kunai.

 _I killed the Hokage,_ he realizes. _The Sandaime is dead_. He tries to strangle his emotions before they strangle him, so he forces his thoughts in a new direction. 

Escape. It’s a nice puzzle. They’d wrapped his pliant fingers around the metal legs of the chair and held them there with metal wire. Chains tied his ankles, arms, and torso to the chair and looped around a link in the ground, keeping both him and the chair tethered. His head is flopped over the back of the chair because he still can’t move, baring his neck invitingly to anyone with academy-level technique and a blunt kitchen knife. He feels even more exposed since they’ve taken his mask. He knows the tactic, has mastered it after three years in ANBU: show your opponents that they are completely at your mercy. Show your prisoners that you don’t care about their privacy or their dignity. It pierces like betrayal that Konoha ninja, who know him, who _know_ that he never takes off the mask, would cross that line. He reminds himself that _he’s_ the actual traitor here, he is the one who assassinated the Hokage—

 _I’m not thinking about this,_ he forcefully reminds himself. _Focus. Escape._ Bound by chains. Metal chair. They’d taken the large patch off of the Sharingan when they’d cut off his mask, leaving only the tape keeping it shut. It was probably to make him feel more exposed and vulnerable by taking any covering, but it was a relief to have that extra obstacle removed, even if he had no way to get the tape off. 

Most jutsu are out of the question; with his hands so far apart, there is no way to form hand seals for quick chakra channeling. He now recognizes the genius of wrapping his hands around the chair legs: jutsu that don’t require seals like Rasengan or Chidori would be met with sturdy metal. He tests a few strands of wind chakra in his palm to see what happens. Nothing does. He increases the chakra flow until he feels it wearing away at the chair leg, then until the leg snaps and he crashes to the ground, his head bouncing off the hard floor. The wire tightens around his hand and closes his fist, and his arm stays fastened to what remains of the chair. Great. He tries a few strands of lightning chakra in his other hand and immediately receives a small electric shock. So chidori is out, then.

Kakashi doesn’t know any ninja who use chakra strands like he does, but he decides that if he ever runs into one, this is the best way to render the skill useless.

Ah, well. He’s stuck in the dungeon of T and I, completely incapacitated, and very uncomfortable tied to a knocked-over chair with broken bones and probably with a concussion. He’ll probably be tortured before the night is out, then once he’s softened up, they’ll send in one of the Yamanaka with their special jutsu, or a friend of his to play heartbroken and guilt him into confessing everything. 

Friend… there was no way the village knew about Tenzou, and even if they did, he has that seal on his tongue. Kakashi’s got one now too, probably the same one. He’s seen little girls in the village with matching bracelets to show that they’re friends, and he thinks, what better way to mark a friendship than an unwanted control jutsu on your tongue? If Kakashi makes it out alive, he’s going to find Tenzou and get them both the hell out of there before either Danzou or the T and I department snag them again. Other friends… Kakshi’s not exactly sure _what_ Gai is, but he feels his heart drop in response to the thought. Would he have heard already? The scene plays out in Kakashi’s head. _Maito-san, I need you to accompany me to T and I._ Gai would dutifully follow, and reassure the ANBU sent to fetch him that he was a loyal Konoha shinobi through and through, and he would gladly assist in whatever he needed, and he’s so honored that they thought to ask him for help. But once they enter the building, they explain why they need him. Gai would get angry. _My rival would never! You don’t know Kakashi like I do! Let me talk to him!_

The guilt that Kakashi’s been hiding from finally finds him. He doesn’t doubt his decision, doesn’t go back on it. He’d decided when he went through with it. He’d weighed the information, weighed the outcomes, and tried to weigh his own emotions. There was no taking it back now, and he doesn’t regret killing the Sandaime. 

Out of everyone, the one person he feels like he’s let down is Gai.

Because of his train of thought, Kakashi’s already gone through some self-inflicted torture when the actual torturers walk in. He’s not ready; he’ll never be ready without his mask. With that to hide behind, he’s stoically unfazed, always. But just the fact that they’ve taken it shows that he’s powerless.

They start with his face, not slicing or burning, but touching. They’ve pulled him upright, brought in some extra chains. Kakashi notes that it’s probably for psychological effect–it’s not like he was going anywhere without them. A masked man holds Kakashi’s chin with tender fingers, turning his head side to side. Kakashi can feel a little bit of strength returning, resolves that once he’s gotten enough back, he’ll catch the fingers in his teeth and give them a good crunch, maybe bite them off. A good medic can easily fix severed fingers, so that’s the furthest he’ll go against innocent Konoha nin. 

The fingers start to caress, then they’re running through his hair. They roam his face freely, brushing the lashes of his non-taped eye, holding his cheek, then finally, the soft hands rest on his neck, right against his traitorous runaway pulse. 

Damn. He’d known their T and I was good, had even appreciated it before now, but with all the information they have on him, and with him effectively helpless against all of it, they’re going to keep hitting him where they know it hurts.

He doubts he’ll be able to give up any information with the seal on his tongue, so this is all futile, anyway, which makes it somehow worse. And they’re only getting started.

Next, the masked man leans forward to grab one of his chained arms, performs a chakra block—he’s got the Byakugan, then— and unravels the chains and wires and pulls the unresponsive arm to hold Kakashi’s hand in both of his, still in a mockery of intimacy.

“I’ve got your arm. Every question you don’t answer, I’m going to break a finger. You won’t be getting a medic. If too many fingers set and heal broken, you won’t ever be able to use hand seals.”

Kakashi knows they’re never letting him out of here, anyway, but jutsu would be nice for when he tries to escape. 

“How were you able to kill the Hokage? You were accompanied by a team of ANBU.”

Danzou deserves to go down with him, but Kakashi’s words are immediately blocked by something constricting his throat—he can’t breathe—did the Hyuuga do that? Could they do that with their kekkei genkai? Is this how they were going to torture him?—a burning on his tongue snaps him into focus. The seal, obviously. This was how it worked. So he tried to say other things that wouldn’t set it off—

his tongue was sliding around his mouth as he slurred out, “chinoli… my joo-soo.”

“What about the other ANBU, did they try to stop you?” The man rubs Kakashi’s index finger.

By the choking, Kakashi deduces that _Danzou, ROOT, they were in on it all along,_ and even a simple _no,_ were all off limits. So instead, he spits out a sloppy “s’nah, nn, s’too fass.” Even Kakashi’s not sure what he was trying to say, and maybe giggles just a bit.

“Why did you kill the Hokage?”

Ah, there’s the question of the hour. Why, indeed? Because he had ordered the murder of an entire clan, and also because he had allowed Minato-sensei to die. He can’t say the Uchiha bit due to the asphyxiation. “Snns,” he says. Apparently, he can’t say the sensei bit either.

The man leaves, and Kakashi’s alone for a few minutes. They’ve probably realized by now that he doesn’t quite have control of his tongue yet, so they’ll either send someone back tomorrow, or they’ll send in a Yamanaka to crash through his brain. While he’s not looking forward to it, he hopes they find everything: Danzou’s little plots, the Uchiha, ROOT, and while they’re at it, maybe a good look at everything Konoha’s destroyed in the name of peace.

Instead, what they get is this:

“There’s some sort of block there, I can’t get past it.”

“Mm. Let me see…” They’d brought in a second Yamanaka once they’d encountered the block from the burning seal. “Hmm. That’s not Hatake’s doing. See how it’s out of place? All around, his mind is fashioned like Konoha— these leaning buildings, the Fourth Hokage where the monument would be—but look at this. It cuts right through buildings and stands in the middle of a street. There’s no way in, it’s dull, doesn’t have the detail of the rest of his mind.”

Kakashi feels a little sting, a bit like heartache, at knowing that he’s subconsciously built Konoha in his mind.

The Yamanaka looks at him, asks, “Can you speak yet?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Let’s get started. Watch this, Inori-san. It’s all about the questions you ask. Hatake, what don’t you want us to know?”

He wants them to know all about him killing the Hokage, so he doesn’t think there’s anything he doesn’t want them to know. Then, they plunge into his mind and it’s all brought to the surface. Apparently, there’s a lot.

He’s standing next to Gai, who is gripping Kakashi’s shoulders and crying. “Kakashi, you are a most honorable shinobi, but I must stay loyal to Konoha. Now, we are no longer eternal rivals. I must be your enemy. Go, leave.”

Kakashi runs. He runs until he stumbles on a dead body with a whole through its chest, then runs until he runs into another, and another. He desperately combs through the bodies, looking for someone. He’s not sure who, until he comes across Obito, who is still hanging on to a thread of life. Obito coughs, splatters blood on Kakashi’s unmasked face.

“This is how… you use my gift?” Obito takes a labored, crackling breath. Blood spurts from his chidori-ruined chest. “To kill… those you should… protect?” Obito takes a last breath in Kakashi’s arms. Kakashi doesn’t let go, holds Obito tight as he runs away, back to the village center to see if there’s anyone he hasn’t already killed. He stumbles over the body of Minato-sensei’s son. He stops to pick him up and cradle him to his chest, then keeps running until he finds Rin. She’s got a chidori hole in her chest, but she’s still alive. He hefts her onto his shoulders and in his ear she whispers, “Kaka..shi, K...Kakashi.”

His feet lead him to his old house, where he lived with his father. The door is open, and he enters, then falls to his knees on the blood-soaked floor. He shrinks, and he’s a kid again. The bodies he’s carrying start to crush him. “Kakashi,” Rin whispers. He tries to lift his father’s body off the floor—the hospital, he has to get them all to the hospital— but he’s too small, and only manages to cover himself in blood. He’s too weak to carry them all anymore, and he falls over his father’s body, the bodies of the rest sliding on top of him. He struggles, trying to get out from under them. His face is wet with tears from Obito’s eye and the sticky blood on the floor.

What he says is: “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t! I’m so tired.”

The Yamanaka pull him up and out of his own mind, and he’s tied to that chair again. It’s true that his face is wet; tears slide from the taped-up Sharingan, bringing sticky tape residue with it. He’s also struggling against the chair. 

His interrogators look at one another. “That was…” one of them starts, but the other cuts him off. “Not here. In a few minutes, we’ll try another question.” They alternate between whispering with each other and watching him.

The wetness of his eye gives Kakashi an idea. Now that he can move, he works his face muscles, turns his head so the built-up tears soak the other edges of the tape. He tilts his head back as far as he can over the back of the chair and continues to squeeze his eye, trying to open it. Now, the tape is held on only by a flap. When the Yamanaka come toward him with another question, he blows the tape up to uncover his eye, spinning, red, and crying.

Three things happen immediately. First, a genjutsu disperses. _Genjutsu?_ Then, Kakashi realizes what the genjutsu was: someone had wanted him to think he’d killed the Hokage. But he didn’t do it; he would _never_ betray the village, even after all the pain it’s caused him. Those who betray their friends are worse than trash. There’s no more time to think about the genjutsu. He immediately puts both Yamanaka under genjutsu. He’s not sure what they’re seeing, but they both scramble to unchain him from the chair. As soon as they’re done, he knocks them both out with a wind jutsu that cuts off oxygen until they’re unconscious, then takes a vest, hood, and ANBU mask off of one of them. He slips out of the room easily, but he doesn’t know where he is in the maze of T and I. He walks purposefully, careful not to convey any urgency in his step, until he finds the stairs leading aboveground. Then, as soon as he makes it, he shunshins across rooftops until he’s at the edge of the village. He needs to get out and as far away as possible before they realize he’s gone and Danzou activates the nerve seal on his neck. As soon as he’s out, he uses chakra with abandon, first summoning his pack. He doesn’t talk much to them, just hands Pakkun the stolen gear and says, “create a false trail toward Suna, then summon yourselves back.” He channels as much chakra as he can into his legs, bounding through the trees.

He stops outside the nearest town to put together a sort of disguise. All he really does is make himself a little stockier, not so wiry, and smudges dirt through his hair, then applies a henge on top of that. He changes his gait a little so he walks with a lumbering slowness instead of his usual light slouch. He goes into the town and checks out a room at an inn. Of course, while the innkeeper is distracted by a strange thumping across the room, Kakashi writes down some fake details in the record book, saying that he’s been staying there for a week. Then, when the man returns, all he has to do is open the Sharingan and he believes it too.

Kakashi’s just made it to the bed in time for the blackout to shudder over him again.


	2. In Which There is Some Information Gathering, but Not a Whole Lot of Information is Actually Gathered.

Again, feeling returns in tingles and then it’s another long wait until he can move, but as soon as he’s able, he limps up to find the mirror and contorts his neck to be able to see the seal. He looks at it with the Sharingan and can see where the chakra anchors the characters and tells them to target his nerves. His guess is that someone in ROOT is carrying a partner seal and that activates his. Partner seals are tricky; if one character is off, they won’t connect, so all Kakashi has to do is change the appearance of the seal. It’d be dangerous, though, to just modify the characters because it could backfire on him by doing the zap-thing on its own without any activation from the other seal. He decides to play it safe.

He’s missing his mask, headband, and vest, so he can’t use those to bite down on to keep from screaming, and he doesn’t trust anything in his rented room to not give him a strange disease if he puts it in his mouth. With a sigh, he gingerly tugs his sleeves, wishing he was already biting something because it’s hard to not scream when he has to lift the shirt over his head and disturb his probably-broken ribs. He scrunches it up and shoves it in his mouth.

At least he’s kept up with laundry, so it tastes like soap instead of old sweat, blood, and electricity.

Kakashi doesn’t want to hurt himself more than necessary, so he lines chakra just under the skin of his neck, then without hesitating, heats up his palm using fire chakra and places it on his neck. He screams into his balled-up shirt, then quickly rips it out to dry-heave over the sink at the sound of his own bubbling flesh. He continues to gag, even as he splashes cool water onto his neck. A look in the mirror tells him that he wasn’t quite thorough enough. There are traces of ink on his scalded skin, and the seal had scattered, patterning ink in a wide radius toward his chin and collarbone. He steels himself, then shoves the shirt back into his mouth and lays his hand down twice more to burn away the reaching ink. Lastly, he takes a deep breath and puts his burning hand on the first spot he burned to go one layer deeper and burn out all of the ink. If the shirt wasn’t blocking his screams, he’s sure they would have reached all the way to Konoha.

He checks out his work in the mirror. He has burnt handprints on his neck, the fingers reaching onto his cheek between his chin and ear. It’s ugly, bubbly, red and raw, but there is no ink. It hurts, a lot, and he doesn’t know how to treat it. He vaguely remembers Rin scolding Obito after a failed attempt at a fireball jutsu— _no, no! Obito! Don’t put anything on it; let it breathe. Here. Water, not ice._ He’s not Obito, though; Kakashi knows better than to spread butter over a burn wound.

He splashes water on it again, and sticks out his tongue to see the other seal. The movement moves the burnt skin ever so slightly, but he’s expecting it, so he just squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, then moves on. 

This seal is not so simple. To test it, he tries to say, “I didn’t kill the Sandaime.” It’s blocked, of course. What’s interesting is the characters that snake down his tongue and into his throat. There’s no way he’ll be able to burn off the seal and its reaching anchors without killing himself, and Kakashi is not his father so he will not be doing that. It’s almost a relief that the burning won’t work; even though he’ll have to figure out another way around the seal, he’s glad that he won’t be burning off his taste buds.

His intense concentration on the seals eases a little bit now that he’s done everything he can, and now that there’s no focus to keep it at bay, the pain comes crawling to his awareness.

Everything hurts. It hurts to breathe—it pulls at his ribs—ouch—and the air scrapes his throat, which is raw from screaming into the gag. His leg or his ankle is broken, maybe both, and it aches until he tries to walk, in which case it stabs him with pain. 

Often, Kakashi finds himself wishing he had the right chakra for healing. Every time his teammates are hurt on a mission, Kakashi’s the one who ends up tending to their wounds. He’s been mostly in ANBU, and medic nin usually don’t have the combat precision to be in ANBU because all of their time goes toward medical training. Most of the time, he’s the most experienced, and he also has good knowledge of anatomy and emergency first aid. Plus, he’s the most desperate to keep his teams together and alive. He wonders if it’s as obvious to everyone else as it is to himself: _I won’t let it happen again, not again, I won’t let it._

Now, he’s injured and he’s alone, and the only thing he can do is try to set the bone and hope for the best. No village medics for rogue ninja. He stuffs the shirt back in his mouth and probes his leg, feeling for the break. There’s nothing in the room he can use as a splint, except, well. Ugh. He tears up one of the floorboards and rips his shirt to make ties. Straightening the bone, he fastens the floorboard to his leg, then pokes at his ankle. It’s swollen and purple and feels like one big soggy bruise. It’s sprained, not broken, which is good, he supposes, because that would be a complicated bone to set, but either way he really shouldn’t be walking on his leg or his ankle, much less running from and fighting whoever Konoha sends after him. There’s nothing he can do for a broken rib except suffer through it. 

Kakashi lies down on the bed. He has no idea what time it is, how long it’s been since he supposedly killed the Hokage, but what he does know is that he hasn’t slept since then, and he’s tired, so he sleeps.

Pakkun’s there when he wakes up. That’s a relief; if something were wrong or he needed to run again, Pakkun would have woken him up instead of curling up to sleep next to him on the bed. It also pulls at his heart a little, because Pakkun wouldn’t have stayed unless he was worried. It’s… nice, almost, to be worried about. It uncovers a part of his heart that’s been dusty and neglected for years, and he suddenly feels overwhelmingly fond of Pakkun. Kakashi pets his ears to wake him up. It’s so cute how Pakkun yawns and his droopy eyes slowly blink themselves awake.

With a bright smile Kakashi reserves for very cute things, he tells Pakkun, “Good morning.”

Pakkun looks serious and sad. “What’s going on, boss?”

In the three years that Kakashi’s had a contract with Pakkun, Pakkun’s seen it all. Kakashi rarely summons his dogs unless there’s some sort of life-or-death situation going on, so Pakkun’s seen combat, blood, and war, but Kakashi’s never seen him look so affected.

He sighs and continues to pet Pakkun. “I’m not quite sure. What I’ve got so far is that the village thinks I killed the Hokage, and-”

“The _Hokage_?” 

“Mm hmm. So they’re after me.”

“And what happened to your… face?” It’s unlike Pakkun to hesitate like that, he’s usually all blunt deadpan. Why- ah. He’s not wearing his mask. Has Pakkun really not seen his face before?

“They put a seal on me to shut down my nerves. I, ah, had to burn it off.” Kakashi says this with a light smile.

“ _Konoha_ did? They have to know that you didn’t really kill the Hokage. You are one hundred percent dedicated to that village!”

“Well,” he starts, about to explain that it was Danzou who did the seal and was probably behind the assassination, but he’s choked by the seal on his tongue. Pakkun’s eyes widen in alarm, and Kakashi opens his mouth to show him the chains of characters moving down his throat. “Don’t worry, it’s just another seal.”

Pakkun doesn’t look reassured at all; he looks horrified. How to explain?

“Ah,” Kakashi feels like a bad person for not knowing this before; he really should get to know his summons better: “Pakkun, can you read?”

Pakkun nods with a grunt.

Kakashi has nothing to write with, no weapons, no ink, no pen, but Pakkun is Kakashi’s nindog, so he’s prepared. There’s a little scroll on him with kunai, sealing paper, and ink sealed inside. Kakashi positions himself to write, but as he brings the pen to the paper, the seal snakes down his arm and wraps around his hand, stopping him. A single drop of ink falls onto the paper.

Kakashi stares at his hand, and Pakkun stares at Kakashi.

“That’s....Well. I’m sure I’ll figure something out.”

And, he does figure _something_ out. It’s just time consuming, exhausting, and not very convenient, and they have to head out into the street.

Kakashi painstakingly pulls his shirt on over his head, careful not to brush it against the burns on his face and neck. It’s ripped and ragged where he tore off cloth for his splint. He then pulls up some more floorboards and fashions himself a crutch, which is hell to use because of his broken ribs, but it’s even more hell to put weight on his leg and ankle. In his haste to get away from Konoha, the adrenaline had overridden the pain, and he’d been using more chakra than muscle, anyway, but now he hobbles along awkwardly, holding himself like he might break. Which, he thinks, is entirely possible.

Again, there’s no mask. He’s not going to put any cloth on his burns only to have to peel it away from sticking blisters and scabs later. He’ll definitely blend in better without it, anyway. As a last touch, he rubs dirt on his hands from where he’d ripped up the floorboard and uses it to cover up the scar on his eye. Now, he just looks dirty and beat up, and not like Sharingan Kakashi.

It’s kind of fun to disguise Pakkun, because he grumbles and gripes. 

“You need to look needier,” Kakashi tells him. “More pathetic.” 

“Any more pathetic and they’ll mistake me for you!”

Kakashi smiles and pats Pakkun on the head. “Here, don’t look so focused. Do your eyes like this and your mouth like this.” Kakashi demonstrates a pout and Pakkun rolls his eyes, but gives it a try anyway. “Aw, there we go! You look absolutely pathetic. And also adorable.”

“You look like a dirty, homeless teenager,” Pakkun retaliates. Kakashi notes that he’s dropped the “boss” and that he’s teasing him back. It’s friendly; it’s nice.

“Ah. Well, I’m dirty, I’m homeless, and I’m a teenager, so I have no objections,” he says as they stroll out of the inn.

To Kakashi’s surprise, it’s early evening. It was night when he was captured by the ANBU, and still night when he arrived at the inn. He must have slept for longer than he thought. He and Pakkun follow the streets to the richer part of the town. Everyone avoids looking at them, except for a few children who want to play with Pakkun, but their parents get one glance at Kakashi’s face then steer the kids away. He won’t steal from any of these people; they’re just normal villagers. Kakashi remembers what it was like when he was younger and they kicked him out of his father’s house because the missions he took as a seven year old were not enough to keep up on payments. So, no, he will not steal from anyone who needs the money.

Instead, he and Pakkun make their way to the biggest house in town. Kakashi’s toppled entire cities and governments before, so he knows: follow the money, and you’ll find the corruption. He’s perfectly okay with stealing from someone who stole that money in the first place. Since he’s a little under the weather at the moment, he sends Pakkun as the investigator. He comes back to report that the owner of the house is not there, and that he runs an illegal smuggling ring on top of being a paid informant for Iwa. 

“Perfect,” says Kakashi. “We’ll take some of that dirty Iwa money, then.”

Pakkun leads the way to a big safe inside the house. There’s no one home, so Kakashi limps without any urgency. Instead of trying to pick the lock, he tilts the safe on its side and uses a fire jutsu to melt through the metal on the bottom. He picked that one up from a teammate, who had supposedly learned it from Senju Tsunade herself. Kakashi has his doubts, but it’s a useful jutsu either way.

In the safe, there is a lot of money. A lot. Kakashi takes enough for supplies and then some, and it doesn’t even make a noticeable dent. There are also documents, correspondence with Iwa. One of them mentions Tenzou: “There are rumors that Konoha has a wood style user. Can you confirm?” Another says, “What do you know about the jinchuuriki?” Another: “How many guardposts are there outside Konoha?” Another, dated last month: “Get Copy Ninja Hatake Kakashi to the border of Fire next week.” Kakashi had been called on an urgent solo mission to the border about three weeks ago, and he’d run into about 15 Iwa nin, all equipped with anti-lightning gear and poison kunai. They’d been easy to kill (a wind jutsu pushing them toward each other and throwing off their kunai, a lightning jutsu to distract them while the earth jutsu trap he’d set grabbed their legs and hands, and a water jutsu to flood the area while they couldn’t flee. It had taken longer to pick up the bodies than it had to kill them). Somehow, Iwa had gotten his own village to send him into a trap and sent 15 jounin and _still_ managed to underestimate him. The real issue here though isn’t Iwa’s stupidity, but rather the fact that Iwa’s had a hand in assigning missions.

He has to warn Konoha. Konoha is his still his first priority, even if they’ve been so easily duped as to send him to the border and again to arrest and almost-torture him for the murder of the Hokage, so he grabs the correspondence. 

In town, they stop to get a few big scrolls, ink, some more legitimate medical supplies than broken floorboards, and ninja wire. In Kakashi’s experience, it’s near impossible to find quality ninja supplies outside of a hidden village, but ninja wire is an exception. It has all sorts of uses besides combat and assassination; he knows his father used ninja wire when he went fishing, people use it as a low-tech defense against intruders, and he’s even seen it woven into rugs and clothing to make it extra durable. The worst way he’s seen it used is probably by Maito Gai: once to stitch up a wound, and another time wadded up to scrub charred food off of a cooking pan. Other than ninja wire, though, the only other useful tool he finds is an axe. The town is surrounded by forest, so it’s not weird for someone to buy an axe. 

At least, Kakashi thinks that until he catches sight of himself in a pane of glass and remembers what he looks like. This prompts him to consider a henge, and also to buy some less conspicuous clothing; he’s wearing a sleek black stealth shirt, the kind that’s tight enough to not rustle or catch on anything—ANBU standard—plus his preferred combat stealth pants, which are a little looser than most ANBU wear, but allow faster movement and more pockets. One of his sandals is undone because he couldn’t buckle it over his swollen ankle, and his toes on that foot are puffy and vaguely purple. He’s still got that floorboard attached to his leg, and dirt on his face. Pakkun’s right: he looks like a dirty homeless teenager—but now he realizes that if anyone looks a little closer, he looks like a beat-up ninja. So, it might look a _little_ weird for him to be buying an axe, both as a homeless teenager or a beat-up ninja. Before leaving he’s sure to grab some less conspicuous farmer’s clothing, including a big straw farmer’s hat to cover his hair and shadow his face.

Back at the inn, after patching himself up and eating, he pulls out the paper and the ink. He dips the brush and lets a few drips off, then goes to write again. The seal wraps around his arm, and again, a drop of ink falls to the page from his aborted movement. He dips the brush again, and thinks about writing a grocery list, until he has to think of what he’s doing and place the next ink drop. The ink drips right below it. 

Kakashi’s learned patience in the past few years, which is good, because his younger self would have been frustrated and self-sabotaging by now. Thirty minutes later, he’s written out a few words in ink spots: _Didn’t kill hokage. Was under strong genjutsu like Sharingan. Seal is from Danzou. ROOT assassination? Can’t say anything against him. Hokage maybe ordered Uchiha massacre._

Kakashi is oddly proud of his work and hopes Pakkun appreciates it. 

Pakkun does not look impressed, just serious.

That’s okay.

Pakkun looks up at him. “What’re you going to do, boss?”

“Mm. I’m not sure. I’ve been a little busy, haven’t thought about it. I’ll let you know, though. Thanks for help, I’ll let you go.”

Pakkun gives him a look—Kakashi’s not quite sure what it means, but he gives a look back.

“Okay, boss. Summon me back when you need anything, and don’t try anything funny with that broken mess you call a leg.”

He puffs out and Kakashi sighs. Pakkun’s the only person on his side, and he’s not even a person. Even so, Kakashi appreciates it. That’s the longest he’s ever talked to Pakkun outside of battle; he feels a little bad about not doing that before—his dogs aren’t just tools, they’re people, too. Well, they’re actually not, but doesn’t that make them more deserving of his respect, anyway? A dog would never trap him with seals and turn him over to the torture squad. Someone from his own village would, though.

Kakashi runs the past week through his mind, hoping to pick out when he was under genjutsu and how and when it happened. He clearly remembers everything he experiences with the Sharingan open, so he has two moments he’s sure of in the last day.

First, fighting the ANBU before they’d activated the seal, and second, getting out of T and I headquarters, when he’d felt the genjutsu break.

So, if the genjutsu broke when he opened the Sharingan, it would have to have been placed _after_ he’d been captured, because he’d had it open to fight off the ANBU.

That’s weird, though, because his memories are all muddled. What had prompted him to flee in the first place? Why had he just sat there and let Danzou brand him with seals? Danzou… what was he trying to do? Kakashi believed him when he presented the evidence that the Hokage had ordered the massacre, but he doesn’t trust that anymore. If Danzou’d been able to catch him in a genjutsu once, Kakashi can’t trust any of his interactions with the man. If he’s that powerful, he could have fabricated anything. Kakashi knows that he’s probably the hardest ninja in the village to cast genjutsu on—since Obito had given him the Sharingan, he’d become an expert in genjutsu, and it was one of his most useful skills. He knows more genjutsu than even the village genjutsu specialists, and his Sharingan makes him impossible to trick—or so he’d thought. To cast a genjutsu strong enough to trap him... no one had been able to since the Uchiha. The only other time he’s seen genjutsu that could do this—manipulate a person’s beliefs, memories, mindscape—is his own Mangekyou Sharingan.

It had to be a Sharingan user, but Sasuke Uchiha is only seven years old, and if he’d awakened the Sharingan, Kakashi would have been the second to know, right after the Hokage.

Of course, there’s one other Uchiha.

The thought coats him in dread, inside and outside, until it drips down his back, and he knows what he has to do.

He spends one more night in the inn, then sets off to find Itachi the next morning.

————

Tracking down missing-nin is not unfamiliar to Kakashi. What is unfamiliar is his bare face and less-than-intimidating farmer’s outfit. It’s a lot easier to scare intel out of low-level ninja when he looks the part, glowing red eye included. As it is, he doubts he could take on any ninja right now; he can barely walk, and that’s _with_ the help of his crutch, so he goes for the more subtle route.

He’s four towns over from where he first stopped, right over the border of Fire and into River, sitting in a ninja bar. It’s not officially a ninja bar, but Kakashi knows the spot. He won’t be recognized as a regular; he doesn’t drink, and he won’t be recognized as the rogue ninja who killed the Hokage; he’s disguised himself well without a henge to give away that he’s trying to hide. On his way there, he passed through a factory town that supplies luxury goods for the daimyo where he picked up a few necessary items: wig, face paint, contacts, and one of those headbands the rich kids like when they play ninja, only he’s turned over the metal plate and scratched in a Valley symbol. The face paint is really only to cover up the scar over his eye, and it works well enough. Two Jiraiya-inspired streaks from eyelid to cheekbone. There’s not much he can do about the burn on his neck, but no one knows Kakashi Hatake has that, anyway.

Kakashi tries to be charming, the way Minato-sensei was. Just smooth and charismatic enough to draw people to him, but just awkward enough they didn’t feel on guard. Along with that, the burn scar makes him look a little older, and therefore less suspicious in a bar.

“Shinobi-san,” Kakashi calls out to what looks like a squad leader of the team of Sand ninja that had strutted in a few minutes ago. If Kakashi had to guess, he’d say they’re on their way out to a mission, not on their way back. Sloppy, stopping in a bar. His team would never dare. “How’s Wind this time of year? I’m headed there, but I’m worried about storms.” The shinobi evaluates him. Maybe she’s not stupid, after all, and this is an intel stop for them like it is for him. 

“Ha,” the Sand ninja replies. “Better than Fire.”

“Yeah, I was across the border yesterday.” Kakashi leans in and lowers his voice, glancing around. “Apparently, the Hokage was assassinated.”

The rest of the squad perks up and starts to participate. “That’s why we’re here!” one pipes up. The leader glares at him, but then continues the line of conversation. 

“We’re to help Konoha look for the killer. Sand sent a bunch of squads, the Kazekage thinks that if Sand can catch him, Konoha will owe us. I’m not sure about that, depends on who they put as the new Hokage. I hear they’re looking for Senju Tsunade, and if it’s her, I think. I think that finding Hatake will definitely help, you know? She’s pretty famous for being Sarutobi’s student.”

“Hmm,” Kakashi replies, flipping through a bingo book he’d lifted off another shinobi earlier. “I hadn’t heard who it was.” He pretends to be surprised when he gets to his own name. “Hatake? The Copy Ninja? Isn’t he Konoha?”

“Guess not anymore. It usually goes this way, though, I think. From within the village, you know.”

“Yeah… the Copy Ninja, too. That’s gotta be a hard loss,” Kakashi says. He’s not trying to be arrogant, just having a little fun. “Good for the rest of us hidden villages, though.”

“Hah. Yeah. If we get our hands on him, we’re not turning him over to Konoha. I will personally suck that eye out of his head and rip off his legs and make him carry them back to Suna walking on stumps. Gotta hand him over alive, though, of course.”

For Kakashi, this is nothing out of the usual. He’s under threat of torture even from his own village at the moment. He takes a sip of colored water he’s parading as shochu and replies, “Ah, a grudge.” He flutters his eyelids, trying to seem just a little drunk. “I’m chasing one of those myself, also Konoha,” he flips to the back of the bingo book and shows Itachi’s picture. “The last Uchiha. Killed my mother. Also got those scary eyes. You should come with me, I’ll let you suck them out,” he adds with a raise of his painted eyebrows.

“I would if I weren’t on a mission, and also if he wasn’t last spotted in Rain. You couldn’t pay me enough to step foot back there.”

“Rain?” Kakashi whines. “Last I heard, he was in Sound!” He’d heard no such thing, which was suspicious now that he thought about it: there was no talk in the ANBU, ROOT, or Jounin Corps of bringing Itachi in. Another arrow pointing to the Hokage’s hand in the massacre.

“Life is rough, brother. One of our jounin had a run-in with him last week; he was stuck in a genjutsu for days, and is still in the hospital; It’s a miracle he’s still alive. Be careful...” She seems to realize that she’d usually follow up that phrase with a name, and pauses.

“Shin," he supplies. Nice to meet you."

“Mariko,” she replies. “Good luck on your mission, we’ve got to get going.”

“Good luck to you, as well,” he replies with a smile.

Kakashi decides to stay a little bit longer to see if he could find out if Konoha was onto him. He slides up to the bar to see what he can pry out of the bartender. At these sorts of places, the bartenders will usually trade information for information. “Hey,” he says. “You heard anything about the Copy Ninja?”

“Depends,” he replies, glancing up from the glass he’s polishing. “What can you tell me?”

“Stone has a hand in the Konoha mission assignments. They’ve been cooperating with a civilian in the next town over. I have proof of it,” he pulls out the documents to show them to the bartender. “I’ll give them to you if you give me everything you have on the Copy Ninja.”

The bartender laughs. “Okay. Seems to be a hot topic recently. And there’s a lot, so what do you mean by ‘everything?’”

He already knows the majority, so maybe not everything.

“Just recent. Past two weeks. And,” he adds as an afterthought, “Uchiha Itachi and any other Sharingan users.” He should be fine connecting himself with Itachi. The Sharingan gives him an excuse, so the bartender will probably think he’s one of the bounty hunters after himself and asking about the Sharingan to know how to beat it.

“Well, Hatake Kakashi just assassinated his Hokage, which I’m assuming you know, since you’re asking after him.” The bartender puts the glass down in favor of wiping off the counters. “He did it with his signature jutsu, chidori, then cast a genjutsu over the whole town with his blood eye to escape.”

“The Sharingan can do that?” Kakashi asks. It’s kind of funny how the tale gets stretched, and he doesn’t have the mask to hide the quirk of his lips, so he presses them together.

“Oh, yeah. It’s super dangerous. One look into the eye and you’re dead.”

Well, Kakashi knows that one well enough.

“So, after that, he runs to Wind country, and Konoha sends half the village after him, but the trail just stops cold. They’re supposed to have some kind of controlling seal on him so they can capture him, but no one can find him, so a bunch of villages are sending out their own teams to find him. Some want to get on Konoha’s good side, some want to recruit him against Konoha, and then there are bounty hunters, but none of them has heard anything except what I just told you."

“Hmm. And Uchiha?”

“Oh, don’t think you can corner him for information against the Sharingan. He’s just as dangerous. He killed his entire ninja clan, he’s not someone you want to run into. But word is he’s in Rain.”

“Any idea what he’s doing there?”

“No clue. Those two are the only ones left with the blood eye, though, so that’s all I got for ya.”

“Thanks,” Kakashi says as he hands over the papers. He trusts that the information will end up in Konoha soon enough. He turns to leave, but immediately turns back to the bar, heart hammering. 

The Ino-Shika-Cho trio are pushing through the doorway.

“...drinking, idiot?”

“No, I just want some snacks! I’ve been starving ever since you lost them in the river!”

“Okay. Might as well stop and eat here, I guess.”

“Chouza, you better get your fill of snacks, because this is our last stop, and I mean it this time.”

Kakashi can’t turn around. He’s been fine so far, unrecognized with the paint over his eyes and his mask off, but Shikaku saw him without his mask, just a few days ago, which means he also saw the seal on his neck, where Kakashi now has a suspiciously fresh burn.

In order for his lingering to not draw any attention, he orders a drink and waits at the bar while the trio sits almost directly behind him. Kakashi slouches and is grateful he’d already been tamping down on his chakra.

Kakashi’s seen the Ino-Shika-Cho trio in action and around the village. He knows their rapport and their humor, but listening to them, they seem subdued. He hears Shikaku sigh, which is not unusual, but it’s ragged and muffled. Kakashi can picture the motion: Shikaku’s hand on his face as he rests his elbow on the table. Inoichi hasn’t said anything, and Chouza complains, “I don’t know if I can go back after this.” Before Kakashi can start to wonder why they sound like that, he remembers. Ah, the Hokage’s dead. Assassinated. Supposedly by Kakashi.

“I know what you mean,” Inoichi says to Chouza. “We had him right there, too, in T and I. They sent in Karana and his student for the mind jutsu. Everyone thinks they’re so great, but I guarantee you that I would not have been beaten by a tied-up, injured fifteen-year-old.”

“Nineteen,” Shikaku corrects. Kakashi can almost hear the glare Inoichi throws at him.

“Either way, I can’t complain now, because I also failed to bring him in.”

They order their food, and then return to their conversation.

Chouza is eating something when he says, “It’s sad, though, you know. The Yondaime’s kid.”

Shikaku hums an agreement, and Inoichi replies, “Are you really surprised, though? We got the reports of Karana’s interrogation, and it’s a wonder he hasn’t snapped earlier.” Kakashi’s face heats up, and he pretends to take a sip of whatever it is in front of him to prevent a reaction from showing. 

“I hate to say it,” Chouza says, “but I almost feel bad for him.”

There’s a thump as chair legs hit the floor, which Kakashi assumes is from Shikaku, who’s probably been leaning back in his chair with his feet on the rungs under the table to keep him balanced. “There’s something off,” Shikaku says. “I’ve worked with Kakashi before, and something’s just… not right.”

“What do you mean?” Chouza asks.

“I’m not sure. But a part of it is, if he killed the Hokage and escaped T and I so quickly, how did those ANBU capture him so fast? What’s Kakashi’s motive? Why would he turn all of a sudden? And it’s a little suspicious how obsessed Danzou is with capturing him, is all I’m saying.”

Kakashi is not one for huge displays of emotion, but he thinks right now he could kiss Shikaku. Not everyone turned against him so quickly! It’s so good to hear, Obito’s eye starts to tear up, and Kakashi has to squeeze it shut to prevent his paint from coming off. Kakashi debates with himself: he’s still carrying the scroll he’d used to explain to Pakkun—he was planning on showing it to Itachi to explain what was going on—so he could somehow leave it with Shikaku. There’s a big risk, though: Ino-Shika-Cho would know where he was at. They could ask the bartender what his customers had asked about, and know he was looking for Itachi. Shikaku might not be able to convince Inoichi and Chouza, and they’d report to the village and they’d be on his trail. In the end, Kakashi asks where the bathroom is then limps, with his back still to the Konoha ninja, to the bathroom on the other side of the bar, enters, and then replaces himself with a rock just outside the building.

He sets off to find Itachi, his heart a little lighter now that he knows not everyone is against him, but his steps a little heavier after turning away from a chance to clear his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for commenting! You guys are the best <3 That's what motivated me to write this week even though I was busy.
> 
> I also have a few other Kakashi fics in the works (bc I'm rewatching the series and Kakashi is hands down my fave). I'm hoping to get a bunch written in the next few weeks, bc I finish summer semester next week, but start fall semester soon so I gotta get ahead.
> 
> Next chapter: What IS Itachi doing in Rain?


	3. Missing Nin Only Wear the Dramatic Crossed-Out Headbands if They're Trying to Make a Statement, and Kakashi Is Not.

It’s a long journey to rain, which gives Kakashi a lot of time to think.

He hates it.

There’s a reason he’s always reading when he’s not on missions—he hates his thoughts and prefers to avoid them when possible. Now, as he sits on the back of a wagon with his injured leg propped up and the driver silent since Kakashi handed over the money, there is no buffer between Kakashi and his thoughts. 

After everything, he’s stayed loyal to the village. He made his first kill at six years, for the village, and since then, it’s been nothing but nonstop blood and him wading through it, stopping to bury the bodies of his loved ones along the way. And for what?

Kakashi hates these thoughts; they make him feel moody and immature and weak, so he leans against the side of the wagon and curls his arms and good leg in, bows his head, and covers his face with his big hat. He tries to think positively, channel Gai’s relentless and obnoxious enthusiasm, but there’s nothing. He has no happy memories to draw on. He thinks the last time he felt relatively not-awful was a few days ago with Pakkun, and before that, maybe a month ago walking to the locker room with Tenzou after a mission. But those are just small moments, where the river slows and the floating debris has a respite before being thrashed again against the rocks.

With Minato-sensei gone, he can’t even come up for air. The current latches onto him and beats him bloody, staining and contaminating everything around him, but he can’t get out.

And with everything, he has always been loyal to the village, always done his part to protect Konoha. When they turned their back on his father, he bore it, then turned to follow them after digging his father’s shallow grave and never looked back. 

How many people has he killed in the name of Konoha? How many pieces of himself has he dropped in order to shoulder the burden?

He did it willingly. Does he still? _Can_ he still? 

The village was his family. After his father, then Obito, then Rin, then Minato-sensei, there was no one else, so he devoted his life to Konoha, and now?

There’s nothing. Even less than there was all the other times he had nothing.

He hates to admit it, but with the village hating him, he understands his father a little better. He forgave him years ago, but his actions still baffled Kakashi: how could he just… leave? He gets it though, now that he’s left, too. Maybe this, running from the village, is its own kind of suicide. He hates it, and it wasn’t his choice, but he feels like he’s dead already, out here on his own. The thought ushers him into sleep, and the next thing he knows, he’s flinching back into the hard wood of the wagon. In his dream, he’d had a chidori through the Hokage’s ribcage, bone splinters scraping his arm, so the second he’s freed from sleep, his arm jerks back of its own accord, hitting his elbow on the wood behind him.

“You okay there, kid?” asks the person who woke him. 

Kakashi walls himself off from the dream, nods, and clears his throat to test his voice. “Yeah, I was just startled,” he says, preparing a smile as he glances up—

It’s a ninja.

Kakashi forces himself not to panic, reminds himself that he hadn’t been killed or captured while he foolishly let his guard slip. If the ninja’d recognized him, he’d already be in a much worse situation. He smiles harder, and bows his head. “Sorry, Shinobi-san.”

The ninja is from Valley, and Kakashi’s glad he’d taken off his imitation hitai-ate. “Don’t apologize, it’s my bad for startling you.” The ninja has a heavy bag slung over his shoulder, and he shifts it up higher as it starts to slip. “Keita-san asked me to wake you up, we’re making camp here.”

Keita is the merchant whose wagon Kakashi’s been riding in, but he’d said nothing about ninja. He must have hired an escort team, and Kakashi must have been very asleep to have not noticed when they joined on. It does complicate things. He still has the wig on and some of the facepaint, but he’d ditched the contacts a while back. The Sharingan drains too much chakra to keep open, and the contacts warp his vision anyway, so he decided to use them for special occasions only and disguised the eye with a fake bruise and puffiness from a semi-poisonous plant as an excuse to keep it closed. 

He makes sure his wig is in place, then peels himself down from the wagon, grabbing his crutch and limping around to the front side.There are four new members of their little caravan, including the ninja who’d woken him up. Unusual for an escort mission unless it’s a team of genin and their sensei. Upon closer inspection, the other three are closer to Kakashi’s age than to the other shinobi’s. He guesses they’re around fourteen. Two are girls, one is a boy. One of the girls is securing traps and alerts around the perimeter with her sensei while the boy unloads gear and the other girl sets up camp. They look efficient and practiced; they’re probably up for the chuunin exams next round, or maybe one of them is already a chuunin, like Kakashi on his old genin team. As he picks his way past potholes and roots to their group, everyone turns to look at him.

“Oi, Limp-chan,” Keita calls to him, apparently too lazy to remember Kakashi’s “name”—Kazuo—and naming him after his injury. “You can start cooking, since you can’t help set up.”

Keita isn’t cooking or setting up; he’s reading some sort of gossip magazine, but Kakashi can’t complain about unfairness since Keita was the only person to give him a ride. One of the girls comes over to help him set up the pot and cookfire. She’s awkward and won’t talk to him; Kakashi assumes her sensei sent her over. The only ingredients are rice and salt, so Kakashi tries to approach this like a non-ninja would and asks the girl, “You ninja are, like, good at hunting, right? Do you think you could catch something for the dinner?”

Without even saying anything, she flickers away, then flickers back minutes later with two rabbits and some wavy leaves.

Kakashi sees the opportunity to get at least a kunai in his inventory. “Could I, ahh, borrow your ninja knife?” She hands one over without a second thought, and soon, Kakashi’s got a nice rabbit-rice-leaf stew going. He can’t remember when he last took the time to cook and eat something, and even though it’s really just water with whatever they could find, he feels accomplished, especially when the ninja thank him and serve themselves seconds. He’s surprised when he remembers how melancholy he’d been earlier, it seems like that was days ago.

Keita eats quickly then goes to bed, so Kakashi sits by the fire with the ninja. They introduce themselves and the ninja clean up their own bowls and Kakashi’s as well, which he appreciates. He learns that the team is already signed up for the next chunin exam, and that the girl who caught the rabbits—Romi—and the boy—Dai, are twins. Also, according to his students, Maro-sensei is opposed to any sort of fun and likes to make them run until their feet fall off. All three students have their feet attached, though, and they’re comfortable complaining about their sensei when he’s right in front of them, so he can’t be that bad. Kakashi knows that he would have done just about anything for Minato-sensei, and thinks that he probably looked at him with the same shining adoration these genin have for their Maro-sensei.

Throughout their conversation, Dai keeps nudging his sister, who’s barely spoken. Their other two team members are also trying to catch Romi’s eye. Kakashi’s not sure what’s going on until she says, “I don’t- I- I know some healing jutsu, but it’s only a little. I could- if you like, I could try to help you? I can’t do bone, but maybe your… face, if you want.”

That’s unexpected. For a second, Kakashi is blank before he understands that she wants to help him, but when he does, his smile is genuine. He can’t have her healing his face, though. He’s hiding a scar and a Sharingan under a big fake bruise, so he says, “Thank you, that’s very kind of you. I would rather not my face, but could you look at my ankle? I don’t think it’s broken, just sprained.”

He feels like he’s put more trust than he even has anymore in her hands when she slides his pant leg up over his ankle. It catches on his splint, and he hisses in pain as she prods at the swelling. Her hands glow green as she moves the healing chakra through the joint and drains the fluid. It reminds him of Rin, and he can’t prevent the Sharingan-perfect memory that the thought brings up—his hand through her chest, his other arm holding her up, the blood gurgling in her mouth—and all of a sudden Romi’s stopped and he realizes that he’s breathing very fast and they’re all looking at him.

“Sorry, sorry. Thank you, Romi-san. I’ll just... thank you, good night.”

He doesn’t have a bedroll, so he just lays flat on the ground and puts his big hat over his face. It’s a little bit chilly, but he would look pathetic if he curled up, and the Valley team probably think he’s pathetic enough, so he’s sprawled out instead. His ankle does feel back to normal, and that’s one less pain he has to worry about. He slept earlier on the wagon, so he’s not tired. He hears a late night conversation between Maro and Romi, who are keeping watch.

“Don’t feel bad, it’s not your fault.”

“But sensei-”

“No, it’s really not. Kazuo has been through… something, I think. You know how Nui-sama is because of the war?”

Romi grunts a “Yeah.”

“It’s like that. You helped him by healing his ankle, and that was the most you could do.”

If only they knew he was Sharingan Kakashi, infamous assassin of the Sandaime Hokage. He hasn’t been through “something,” he got these injuries running from his own village, and even now, he’s on his way to meet up with Uchiha Itachi of Uchiha Massacre fame. He feels guilty, and at the same time, he doesn’t. He doesn’t want the melancholy he was feeling earlier, so he shuts them out and tries not to think. 

\---------

Four days later, they’ve finally made it to Rain Country and they part ways. Kakashi wishes the team luck on their chunin exams, and they wish him luck on going to live with his brother, which he will not be doing, but he appreciates the sentiment.

He walks for about as long as he can before using the crutch becomes unbearable on his ribs, then stops to eat. Now that he doesn’t have to keep up his disguise, he pulls out the kunai he’s been using to prepare food and flings it at the first thing that moves, which turns out to be a deer. The kunai hit it straight through the heart. It’s too much to eat, so he cooks part of it, then slices the rest up and hangs it over the fire on ninja wire to make jerky, speeding along the process with a combination wind-water jutsu that sucks out moisture. While he’s waiting, he takes a nap, then washes in a nearby river and re-does the splint on his leg.

At this point, he’s not sure if it would be better for Itachi to recognize him or if it would be better to try to approach him in disguise. He weighs his options, and in the end decides not to put back on the wig, facepaint, or fake bruise. Itachi has the Sharingan, and he’s a brilliant ninja on top of that. He might not recognize Kakashi in disguise, but he’ll probably pick up on the fact that Kakashi’s a ninja and that he’s trying to hide. It would put Kakashi on edge and make him more hesitant to trust, so he assumes it would have the same effect on Itachi.

It would help to be recognizable, so… a mask. Kakashi’s almost giddy at the thought. He thinks, _as soon as I have a mask back on, I’m proposing, and we’ll get married by some shady official in Rain. These days without it have been the worst, and I can never be separated from Mask-chan like that again._

He prods the burn on his cheek—it’s even more oozy than it had been when he started toward Rain, but it hurts less. He could probably get away with one of those hospital masks that hook behind the ears because it wouldn’t stick to and suffocate the burn, but he doesn’t have one. He could rip up what’s left of his old shirt and make a scarf, but that would lock the burn in and rub against it with the movements of his shoulders. The best he can come up with is tearing a chunk out of his shirt and tying it above his nose like they did in Wind during the war to keep their lungs free of sand. It lets air in and it doesn’t scrape against the burn, so Kakashi’s content. Automatically, he feels more like himself: confident, capable, and, as Maito Gai likes to call him, “cool and hip.” The coolness is ruined a little bit by his spasming crutch-hop, but he imagines Gai praising his hard core battle wounds and laughs.

If Shikaku doesn’t believe Kakashi’s a traitor, maybe Gai won’t either.

Kakashi quickly seals up his gear and his fresh jerky in one of his scrolls, and starts toward the village. It’s at the top of a hill, and on a normal day, it’d be a ten minute run, but today, it’s more like a three hour trudge. He puts on the straw hat for travel and sets off. There are occasionally other travelers leaving the village, but he checks them out with the Sharingan before they even get close, and keeps his head down when they cross paths. 

About an hour in, he spots a group ninja-running. He sees that they have Rain headbands on, so he doesn’t think anything of it at first, just some shinobi headed out of town. As they zip past him, however, their conversation floats toward him. He catches “Keita,” “ninja from Valley,” “just some genin, though,” and “no, we can’t leave any witnesses,” and urgency snaps his head up and turns him around. He’s already summoned Pakkun before he’s chakra leaping off his good leg down the hill he’d just climbed.

“Find the group I was with! Warn them! Rain ninja are on their way to kill them all!”

Pakkun disappears with another puff, and Kakashi tries using his crutch to propel him forward. He occasionally has to land with his broken leg. Every time it hits the ground, he grunts in pain. It’s going to damage the leg even more—that’s why he’s been staying off of it—but some things are worth the sacrifice.

Years before, he’d hesitated to turn around, and he still thinks, _would Obito be alive if I’d listened to him sooner?_ He won’t let it happen again. As he runs, he scans the area with his Sharingan. He can see the caravan in the distance, and he’s gaining on the Rain ninja. He hears thunder, and rain breaks over the horizon. It’s heavy and gathers in puddles almost immediately. Kakashi’s wet hair sticks to his head and the makeshift mask is cold and slick where it sticks to his face. He absently realizes that the straw hat must have flown off. 

He knows the group from Rain is made up of all jounin; the way they’d said “just genin” sounded dismissive, and chunin tended to say the word with more self-importance.

He arrives at the caravan just in time to see a Rain nin grab Romi’s head. There’s no time. Obito’s Sharingan is open wide, and he activates chidori, tearing through the ninja’s chest before he can twist Romi’s head and snap her neck. The lightning in his hand catches on to falling raindrops, so the air all around him is full of electricity, sparking in spots like dying stars. 

He finds the next ninja running toward the other girl on the team, easily batting away the kunai she throws. The girl is trembling but her eyes are grim and determined. Kakashi trips the ninja with his crutch, and he falls right into the chidori. Kakashi efficiently rips his hand out of the ninja’s chest and spins to put it through an attacker who was approaching from behind. He jumps onto the wagon to find the rest of the jounin, and wobbles as his leg gives out. He hears Pakkun barking and sees him rip out a Rain ninja’s throat with his teeth. Using his elbow to prop himself up on his crutch, he races through the hand seals of a jutsu that turns the falling rain into pellets of sharp ice, and watches as it shreds the remaining three ninja who are attacking Maro and his student.

He checks one last time to make sure there are no more attackers, then the battle is done and the mess he’s made falls on his shoulders heavy with the rain.

He’s standing on the wagon, his Sharingan glowing red, silver hair uncovered, and his face masked. He knows what he looks like—he looks like Kakashi the Copy Ninja, who has a bounty bigger than the entire land of Rivers on his head. The chidori’s not in his hand, but electricity is still skittering through raindrops and over puddles. Then, of course, there are the seven dead jounin on the ground and the diluted brown-orange of blood swirling in the water.

The ninja team is gaping at him.

He doubts they’ll fight him and try for the bounty themselves after he’d easily taken down six jounin, but they could alert their village, or even Konoha, and they’d send ANBU to find him in Rain.

He’s frozen for half a second, still wobbling and leaning on the crutch he’s holding with his elbow. He shifts his grip so he’s holding it normally and it can bear more of his weight, and he’s about to flicker away until the crutch loses its grip on the wet wood and he slips and falls off the wagon. Before he can gather himself up and flicker away, Maro’s helping him to his feet. 

“Thank you, Kazuo—uh, Copy Ninja-san,” he says with a bow, and Kakashi doesn’t wait to see what he says next, just flickers behind a tree and flees back toward the hill he’d climbed earlier.

Someone knows where he is now, and his leg is not feeling too great after his sprint to the caravan. What’s more, he’s lost hours of walking and is completely drenched and missing his hat, which he only now realizes he’d grown attached to. But despite everything, he can’t bring himself to regret turning back.

Pakkun trots up next to him.

“Hey, Boss, I could probably convince Bull to carry you for a bit.”

“Uh…” it’s cute, but Kakashi’s not sure that’d be any better than what he’s doing right now. Then he reconsiders. He has to look pretty bad for Pakkun to say that, and he supposes that he’s definitely seen better days. He’s numb from the cold rain and struggling to find traction on the slick road up the hill, and he’s really, really trying to keep weight off his leg because it’s throbbing and stepping on it steals his breath and makes his eyes water.

So he sighs and says, defeated, “Sure, Pakkun. Thanks.”

Pakkun shows back up with Bull and a flat wooden board. “We can tie this to Bull, and he can pull you instead of carrying you. It’s a lot more comfortable.” Kakashi is so glad he bought that ninja wire; it’s been more useful than he expected.

They run across his hat along the way, and Kakashi promises to let it officiate his wedding to Mask-chan, that’s how much he missed it. His dogs leave him at the gate, but not before he unseals and gives them some of the jerky he made earlier as thanks.

Bedraggled, tired, and sloshing with every step, he makes his way to the tallest building in the town, lifting Ninja tools and money off of every distracted ninja. The Village Hidden in the Rain is not at all like Konoha; the guard at the gate had taken money and no explanation, and as the rain lets up, he sees most of the buildings are not actually buildings at all but rather sheets of metal set on concrete walls and held there with big rocks. The ninja are the only ones with shoes, and everyone’s pants are mudstained by the ankles. He wonders if the leader of Rain would ever order an entire district of the city massacred. Maybe. He can’t say.

The tallest building is in the busiest section of town. Kakashi has doubts in his plan, but really, he’s tired of everything, so the direct route is the most appealing to him. He hides his crutch and scales the building easily using his hands and good leg, then straps the hat on and holds it with his hand to keep it from flying off. He jumps off the building, channeling chakra, and lands on his hands and good foot, denting and cracking the dirt of the road and creating a big wave in the leftover puddle. 

“Uchiha Itachi!” he shouts as a subtle wind jutsu carries his voice as far as it can, “I’m here to fight you! To the death! You killed my brother!” Itachi himself probably won’t show up, but at least a hundred and fifty people would spread the news, and he’d probably find him within the next day. The crowd churns. Some roll their eyes, some try to discreetly walk away, but most form a circle around him and start to whisper. Perfect. Kakashi performs the wind jutsu again, and their murmurings are carried back to him.

“Who?”

“Uchiha? He’s that missing nin that’s got the red eyes.”

“I met him last week for the first time; he’s so short, I’d swear he was only fifteen!”

“Lives up on the rock with Konan and them. He’d crush this guy like a grasshopper.”

“Who does this skinny freak think he is? Thinks he can take on him?”

“Those missing nin always bring us trouble. I keep saying we need to kick them out!”

Then, to his surprise, the murmurs change and the crowd parts.

“It’s him!”

“Move!”

“Sshh! Shut up!”

Itachi comes forward in small, soft steps, looking calm and serious and utterly unaffected. His long black cloak brushes the water but stays dry, and the slash through the leaf on his headband was carefully done, smooth and even.

Kakashi hopes against all hope that Itachi will trust him and play along, and perversely hopes that the Hokage _did_ order the Uchiha Massacre, because if not, he’s completely misunderstood Itachi and will probably die, injured and unequipped. In that moment, Kakashi realizes that he does believe it; if not, he would not have sought out Itachi this way; he would have tried to catch him with his guard down and incapacitate him. Instead, he’s approached him head on, hoping that Itachi will understand.

Kakashi flickers closer, not wanting to step and give away his injury. He tilts his head just slightly. His hat should hide his face from the crowd but leave his eye visible to Itachi. He opens Obito’s Sharingan as he speaks, lets Itachi know it’s him. Itachi tenses; Kakashi knows it from the small ripples that show up where he’s standing on the water. “Uchiha.” He holds his hands like the start of a jutsu he’s ready to fire should Itachi make one wrong move, but really, it’s outdated Konoha ANBU code that Itachi should recognize— _follow me_. Itachi takes a step closer and Kakashi flickers away. As expected, Itachi easily traces it with the Sharingan, and Kakashi uses flicker after flicker to first grab his hidden crutch and then to lead Itachi out of the village. As soon as they’re out, Kakashi sets up a preliminary genjutsu that camouflages them and pushes people away.

Itachi stares at him placidly.

“Kakashi.”

“I need to talk to you.”

Itachi narrows his eyes, and Kakashi stands his ground despite the chill he feels.

“You killed the Sandaime?”

Kakashi tries to shake his head on instinct, but is stopped by the seal winding around his neck. With an internal complaint, _I guess half the world has seen my face by now,_ he unties the damp mask and sticks out his tongue to show the seal.

Itachi’s eyes widen and the Sharingan spin. “Danzou.”

Kakashi nods. He ties back on the mask before pulls out the scroll where he’s sealed everything and places his hand on the seal that holds the scroll with his painstakingly written explanation. He holds it open for Itachi to read and watches as his eyebrows pull together in a frown.

“I have a better place to talk,” he says, and then turns to run. 

When Kakashi interrupts with, “Ah, Itachi? Could we walk instead of run?” and a gesture to his leg, Itachi lifts him up onto his back without another word.

Back in ANBU, when Kakashi still called him Itachi-kun, Kakashi had carried him on his back a few times. Nostalgia clings to him like his wet clothing until it’s uncomfortable, and It’s a strange sort of relief that Itachi listened to him and is willing to talk, but his head is reeling from the implications.

Itachi sets him down at the entrance to some kind of cave. “Here we are,” he says as he leads the way in. There are little sitting mats, and Itachi gestures at him to sit, so does, propping his bad leg out straight.

“Itachi. Is it true?”

The shadowy cave light accentuates the lines under his eyes, and he looks weary as he replies, “Yes. But that’s a non-issue right now. If what you’re saying is what happened, that Danzou orchestrated the assassination, that’s a big problem, because Danzou’s Hokage now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a weird story for me, because 1. I chose present tense for some reason, and 2. it's just event after event, and both of these are hard to do with my usual writing style which is a little more descriptive and introspective and pretty metaphor + simile heavy. I'd like some feedback, though: does it move too quickly from event to event?
> 
> Also, I have totally no idea what the Akatsuki's up to at this point in canon, if they even exist yet, if Nagato is still alive, what Itachi's up to, so this info is all very foggy and based on wikis except for when I decide to ignore them and do my own thing.
> 
> Next chapter: Kakashi and Itachi catch up and have some ex-teammate bonding time <3
> 
> Thanks for commenting ilysm xoxo


	4. Kakashi Meets the Akatsuki and Still Does Not Get Medical Help

The past two weeks have been disaster after disaster, so Kakashi just blinks. After a second, he groans and runs his hands through his hair, ready to tear it all out. 

Of course. Of course Danzou’s Hokage now. 

All he can say is: “Well. That’s not good.”

Itachi’s lip quirks. “No. It’s not.”

Without realizing it, Kakashi’s planning to go back to Konoha and take care of it. He’s already being hunted for the supposed assassination of one Hokage, what’s one more to the list? He doesn’t say this to Itachi; he still does not understand his allegiance, what with his crossed-out leaf symbol but apparent concern for Konoha. Instead, he says, “I thought they were going to get Tsunade?”

“No one had been able to find her.”

Kakashi digs deep in his brain for any other Konoha ninja powerful enough to be Hokage, but Jiraiya has made his distaste clear, and any other worthy candidates are long dead. Just a few years ago, the village had Minato-sensei, Kushina, and the Sandaime. They even sort of had Jiraiya. Now, though, the only ninja with the leadership ability is Nara Shikaku, and the only one with the power and skill to protect the village is probably Tenzou with his wood style. After that, Kakashi himself is probably the most powerful ninja in the village. Or, was, before he was framed for killing the Hokage. With Obito’s Sharingan, his 5-element chakra affinity, and over a thousand jutsu, if the village were truly desperate, he might have been considered for leadership—not Hokage, probably, but assistant or another step up ANBU leadership.

It all makes sense now to Kakashi: the seal, Danzou, being framed for the assassination. He also knows the depths of Danzou’s corruption and dishonesty, so Danzou needed him out of the way.

“We need to take down Danzou,” Itachi says. “He is terrible for the village.”

Itachi’s eyes are intent and focused, but there’s no fire in them that he sees in the Sharingan in his own reflection. That fire comes from Obito, he’s sure; Kakashi’s own fire was doused long ago. He’s not sure Itachi ever had the fire to begin with, though—he was always quiet and respectful and did ANBU work with a smooth grace that suggested emotional calm. Now, though, he looks weary, his movements and speech reserved and controlled.

“It was Danzou who was behind the massacre. He told me it came from the Sandaime, but now I’m not sure. I was thirteen. I wasn’t sure who to believe.”

Kakashi looks for a sign that Itachi’s manipulating him, but comes up with none. With Danzou, he thought that because he could recognize the manipulation, he could resist, and now here he is: half his face burned off, in Rain, and sitting in a cave with Konoha’s second most notorious missing-nin, only second because Kakashi’s usurped the spot for first.

He knows Itachi, though. He still reacts the same way—Kakashi remembers the ripples he saw on the water from Itachi’s chakra, and now, Itachi looks cautiously honest.

Anyway, Kakashi is ready to believe the worst of Danzou at this point.

“I’m sorry,” he says, lamely and pointlessly.

There’s an awkward lull in the conversation when Itachi doesn't reply, so Kakashi brings up the other thing. He pulls out the scroll and points to the part about the genjutsu and the word _Sharingan_. 

Itachi exhales and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “As far as I know, you and I are the only living Sharingan users. I do know someone I can consult on doujutsu, though.” He uses his hands to push off his knees and stands up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Wait here.”

Itachi starts to walk away, but turns back, his robe swishing and his ponytail swaying. “I’m here with three other missing-nin. I trust Konan and Nagato. I’m not sure about Tobi yet, but he hasn’t done anything untrustworthy—he’s the one in the orange mask—I’m just letting you know, you can relax. None of them will be… burning your face off or breaking your legs.”

“Ah. That’s nice.”

Smiling, Itachi replies, “They might try to hurt your feelings, though.”

“Good thing I don’t have any of those.”

Itachi’s laugh is soft and crinkles his eyes; it’s remarkably gentle. Kakashi watches him leave the cave, then takes his weight off his palms and slides himself backwards until he’s leaning against the wall. Condensation slides down the rock to his back, but that’s the least of his worries—despite everything, he can’t help but trust Itachi.

\------------------

Itachi comes back with two ninja dressed in the same black robes and proudly slashed headbands. Kakashi positions himself on his feet with a loose hold on his crutch so he won’t jar his ribs, but it doesn’t stop him from wheezing when he bows, and he has to hold it while Itachi introduces him. 

“Hatake Kakashi, ex-Konoha elite jounin. He was the captain of my Black Ops team.” Itachi’s tone is familiar; it’s the same one he used to report when Kakashi was his captain, so whoever these ninja are, Itachi reports to them. They’re probably the leaders of whatever is going on here. Kakashi comes out of his bow and tries to hide the fact that he’s wincing and wheezing.

One of the ninja, the one with purple hair, says, “Copy Ninja Kakashi. I’m Konan, and this is Nagato. We run a team called the Akatsuki, and we operate here out of Rain. Itachi said you had a question?”

Kakashi’s sick of getting strangled by the seal, so he just looks at Itachi. It’s times like these he misses having two normal eyes, because he can’t see Konan and Nagato while he’s looking at Itachi unless he opens Obito’s Sharingan, but if he did, they would immediately be aware he was watching them.

Itachi, thankfully, explains the seal, then the genjutsu. “Kakashi was under a strong genjutsu. He said it was like someone used a Sharingan on him.”

Nagato looks skeptical, standing with his arms crossed. He’s about a hand taller than Kakashi and holding himself straight and commanding, while Kakashi is hunched and leaning on his crutch. Usually, Kakashi leans back in a slouch and can still look down at people rather than up at them, and now he feels defensive and helpless, all folded in on himself. He has to tilt his head to look up at Nagato, who responds to Itachi without uncrossing his arms.

“Like the Sharingan how?”

Kakashi looks at Itachi. He hopes his eye conveys what he’s trying to get across: _Hey, Itachi, you don’t know what the genjutsu was like because you weren’t there and I didn’t explain it to you, but I can’t talk about it, so it’s on your shoulders and also look how cute and pathetic I am, would you help me out pretty please?_

The look that Kakashi gets back is, _You better appreciate this,_ and Itachi jumps into an explanation of Sharingan technique to Nagato.

“Sharingan genjutsu is almost impossible to detect and can only be dispersed with a doujutsu, and specific genjutsu. It’s not just the chakra pathways being manipulated to show an illusion, but also the mind to alter thoughts and beliefs. Some genjutsu can actually transport you into a mindscape, like my Tsukuyomi. Kakashi,” Itachi says, turning back to him, “When you say it was like the Sharingan, do you mean that it transported you to a mindscape?”

“No,” he responds. He would describe it, but at the thought, the seal is already scrawling itself over his skin.

“Was it impossible to disperse?”

“Yes.”

Nagato narrows his eyes. “How do you know it was a genjutsu, then?”

Kakashi opens Obito’s eye for a moment and taps next to it. He looks at Itachi beseechingly, taps his temples and says, “I killed the Hokage.”

“You…killed the Hokage under genjutsu?”

Kakashi sighs and rubs his face. How to do this? He pulls out the scroll again and points to _I didn’t kill Hokage,_ then _genjutsu,_ then tries again. “I killed the Hokage,” he says, tapping the side of his head. They all just stare at him.

“You killed the Hokage with genjutsu?

“No. I killed the Hokage with a _chidori_ and I knew I was doing it,” Kakashi tries, still pointing to his head, then again to _I didn’t kill Hokage._

“Itachi?” Konan asks, and Itachi shrugs and raises his hands in a way that says, _don’t ask me, I’m not the one pointing like a lunatic._

What Kakashi’s doing isn’t working, but he really doesn’t want to go through the draining endeavor of trying to write again. Hasn’t he done enough today? He’s hiked through the rain for hours on an already broken leg and killed a whole group of jounin; he deserves a break. Plus, the thought of fighting against the seal and letting it strangle him with every drop of ink is just not inviting.

He sighs. “Give me a minute to figure out how to explain this to you.” He shoves the facts into his brain and tries to spit them back out as ideas: if he were in Konoha, someone could read his mind with the Yamanaka jutsu—maybe something similar? Wait, no. Somewhere in the fog of the past few weeks there’s a memory, a ninja diving into his mind and finding a block around the sealed information, so that wouldn’t work anyway. Writing again would take hours and would be unpleasant, and he risks not explaining it well and having to do it over and over until he gets it right. Kakashi saves that one as a backup option. If he weren’t the one talking, could he explain it? If he possessed Itachi and spoke through him? The Nara shadow possession, but Kakashi doesn’t have that… he does have the Sharingan, though. He could create a genjutsu that shows Itachi, Konan, and Nagato what happened. He probably shouldn’t use the chakra for all three of them, though, especially when he’s trying to heal.

Now the issue: would they willingly let him put them under a Sharingan genjutsu? Itachi, if anyone.

“Itachi, could I put you under genjutsu to explain?” Itachi has two Sharingan, and he understands genjutsu, so he could easily break out. Plus, he knows Kakashi, and with any luck, likes and/or trusts him. 

Well. That last part’s a bit of a long shot, but no matter.

“Okay,” says Itachi.

Itachi closes his eyes and Kakashi tries the genjutsu, but it doesn’t work. The seal prevents him from communicating even with his chakra. He and Itachi both start choking, and Itachi opens his eyes to pull himself up and out of the seal’s strangle. “I’m assuming it didn’t work,” he says.

Apparently not. 

“Maybe I could try the genjutsu,” Itachi offers. “My Tsukuyomi would bring us both into my mindscape, and maybe the seal wouldn’t have influence.”

Kakashi doesn’t want to be put under genjutsu, especially not after last time, but it would be rude of him to expect Itachi to do it but not himself. It also sounds like it just might work, so he nods and steels himself.

Itachi’s eyes are spinning hypnotically, and Kakashi’s mesmerized by the tomoe spilling into the Mangekyou. If he didn’t know firsthand where it came from, he might think it was beautiful. Itachi’s genjutsu is perfectly executed, no warping or stuttering; he’s just all of a sudden somewhere else—Konoha. How bittersweet.

“Try to say something,” Itachi says.

“I didn’t kill the Hokage.”

Kakashi smiles a stupid smile; he’d probably look really dopey without the mask. Euphoria bubbles up inside him, and he’d love to jump and shout, but instead he just says a dull “Oh! Good,” then launches into his explanation.

“Danzou approached me a few weeks before the assassination. Well, even before that, really. I was in his secret ANBU, ROOT, for a few months. I was originally there to do a little spying, but-” Kakashi stops himself—he hasn’t thought this through; how much does he want to share with Itachi? A glance shows Kakashi that Itachi’s as impassive and serious as ever, but he remembers what Itachi had just told him: that he’d believed Danzou, that he was only thirteen and didn’t know what he was doing. Kakashi decides to share everything, even the parts he’s ashamed of, even the parts he hasn’t had time to sort out and confront yet.

It’s a little strange to have a personal conversation standing like this, though, exactly like they were earlier in the village, like they’re about to fight to the death for Kakashi’s brother’s honor. Or something. He doesn’t quite remember. 

“Does your mindscape have benches? It’s kind of a long story, now that I think about it.” 

“Of course,” Itachi says, and leads him to a bench that’s suddenly there. Kakashi doesn’t limp in the genjutsu, which is nice. How considerate of Itachi.

“How rude of me to come into your mindscape and heckle you like this, Itachi. Please forgive an old man his forwardness.”

Itachi looks at him flatly. “How old are you, again?”

“Maa, Itachi, you don’t ask an old man his age. It’s taboo.”

“Is it?”

“It is. And didn’t you see me all limping and hunched over out there? That’s what old age does to you, have some sympathy.”

“Of course. Forgive me, Kakashi-jii-san.” Itachi’s smile is like Kakashi’s—it squints his eyes—and he looks a lot more like the Itachi Kakashi remembers, probably because he can’t see Itachi’s active Sharingan. He wants to prolong the moment of camaraderie.

He also wants to put off discussing the personal topic he’s just decided on. It’s not that Kakashi avoids his feelings—he compartmentalizes. He visits the memorial stone in the mornings, then reports to his ANBU duties in the afternoons or evenings. He’ll set aside time to set flowers at Rin’s grave and delve into his guilt at how he failed her—then leave the cemetery straight off to an S-rank assassination mission. In the dim light of his apartment, he wakes up from nightmares crying and shaking, but he leaves it there and then returns to it when he returns and unlocks his door. He’s not used to tackling personal issues without planning and sufficient time to prep himself; he likes to know he’s restricted his depression to himself, dealing with it on his own time and in his own space. It’s not going so well for him since being on the run, since he has neither. _It’s all out of order anyway,_ he tells himself. _Might as well stop stalling and get on with it._

“So, Danzou. I was, ah, I think I was starting to believe what he was saying, you know?”

Itachi nods. Of course Itachi knows; he’s been there. 

“So, I was running his little errands, some assassinations here and there for a couple of months, and I thought that maybe he had a point. That maybe the Sandaime didn’t do what was best for the village, and Danzou did. The night of the assassination, he made sure I was put on the ANBU protection detail. All of us were ROOT, and the plan was to kill the Hokage, it didn’t matter who got the final blow.

“I had a conversation with the Sandaime that day that changed my mind, and I warned him, but it wasn’t enough. I also saw Danzou that day, and I think he did...something to me. I’m sure he suspected something, now that I think of it. I don’t remember the assassination well. All I saw was the- there was a hole in the Sandaime’s chest, and it was sparking, like I had killed him with a chidori. But it wasn’t me. I had already decided not to. Danzou’s men grabbed me, and I didn’t even try to get away, which in hindsight is a really big indicator that Danzou had already done something to me by then. I let him put the seals on me. I believed that I’d killed the Hokage.”

Kakashi’s not used to talking for this long, but he continues after a deep breath. “On my neck, you saw the burns. There was a seal there, they used it to capture me. It was a partner seal, they activated it, and it did something to my nerves. I burned it off, but the one on my tongue is a different kind so I can’t. I was in T and I, and I was finally able to open the Sharingan. I felt a genjutsu disperse, and I realized that I’d been under a genjutsu to believe that I’d killed the Hokage, and I knew that I didn’t. It changed my thoughts, and I didn’t notice it, so that’s why I said it was like the Sharingan. I don’t know when or how it happened. Anyway, I ran, and here I am.”

Itachi wasn’t looking at him; instead, his eyes were narrowed as he thought through Kakashi’s story. “That does sound like the Sharingan,” he said. “But as far as I know, you and I are the last who can use it. I’m hoping Nagato can help. He has a doujutsu, and I think he’s done research because he knows more about the Sharingan than anyone I’ve met. I’ll explain the genjutsu to him. Let’s head back.”

Kakashi nods, but by the time he finishes the gesture, they’re back in the cave. Nagato continues to look disapproving as Itachi explains, but nods, looks to Konan, and says, “I’ll look into it.” To Kakashi, he says, “You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need, Itachi can show you around.”

Itachi leads him to a different cave and through a dark tunnel. Itachi doesn’t light any sort of torch, using only his Sharingan to see ahead. Kakashi opens Obito’s eye and does the same to keep from stumbling; he doesn’t want to jar his broken leg. Eventually, the tunnel lets out into the light, and a small house comes into view. It’s lifted off the ground with wooden stilts, and water runoff is still running here from the hills next to the house. The stilts are probably there because the water is always running by and making the ground too soggy to build on directly. In Fire, the trees protect the ground and keep it firm by drinking up all the water. Kakashi prefers that. When it rains in Konoha, the evidence is gone by the next day and they don’t have to walk through puddles and rain-ruined mudpaths. He misses it.

Itachi avoids squelching through the mud and just uses chakra to jump from the rock of the cave to the house. Kakashi’s not really feeling up to jumping, so he uses an earth jutsu to create a stone walkway that he limps across. Inside, the house reminds Kakashi of his own apartment—it could not be more clear that this is a house occupied by ninja. Ninja boots by the door, katana and shuriken decorating the wall, a jar of soldier pills in the kitchen, seals on the walls and windows.

“Konan and Nagato run the Akatsuki,” he says. “We’re a group of missing-nin, but dedicated to peace. We’re mostly mercenaries; we’re just trying to build up the organization right now. The cave is headquarters, and the rest mostly just come and go, but I’ve been here for a few months. Konan and Nagato are here most of the time, and Tobi… sort of. You can use any of the bedrolls downstairs and rooms on this floor.”

“Thanks,” Kakashi says, making his way to one of the doors.

He’s interrupted by Itachi.

“How is… How is my brother?”

Kakashi shouldn’t be surprised, but he is. Of course Itachi would care about his last living family member—the only one he’d left alive. Kakashi knows very few things about Itachi’s brother: His name is Sasuke, he’s the same age as Minato-sensei’s son, Naruto, and in the same class at the academy. He lives alone in the Uchiha compound. The Hokage keeps track of his academic progress and sends someone to check on him occasionally, but it’s never been Kakashi. He can imagine, however, that Sasuke’s having a similar childhood to his own—learning how to cook for himself, dealing with money problems, coming to terms with tragedy, trying to navigate the adult world when he’s shorter and smaller and lonelier than everyone else. His mind jumps from Sasuke to Naruto, who is probably doing the same thing, and he feels a twisting guilt in his gut. After his own experiences, he’s just letting the same thing happen to others? Another failure to add to the list, right under _assassination of the Sandaime Hokage_. 

To Itachi, he replies, “Sasuke’s in the academy. He’s an exceptional student, from what I’ve heard. The Hokage’s keeping an eye on him. Or. Um. He was.”

Itachi looks at him in wonder, like he’s still thirteen and Kakashi’s his first ANBU captain, and Kakashi’s guilt twists even more. Itachi had looked at him like this before, fought and killed with him, trusted him, and Kakashi let him down. He hasn’t looked out for Itachi’s family; he hasn’t even glanced in Sasuke’s direction. Itachi looks eager to hear more, but Kakashi has nothing. He elaborates instead, hiding behind a slouch and adding details to the situation hoping that they distract Itachi from the lack of details about his brother.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard from Konoha, but they changed Academy policy about a year ago. There’s no more early graduation. The students enter when they’re seven and leave when they’re twelve.” He sighs, and adds wryly, “No more six-year-old chuunin like you and me.”

Itachi looks more pleased at that than Kakashi expected, like that was better to hear than news of his brother. “I am happy to hear that. Hopefully, one day, there will be no need for the academy at all, no more wars, and no more ninja.”

If that’s the goal of the Akatsuki, they definitely have their task cut out for them. The weight of it pulls him out of his slouch, and he doesn’t know what to say, so he goes with a neutral, “That would be… nice.”

“It would. Rest well,” Itachi tells him with a nod. As Kakashi makes his way to a room, he’s very conscious of how Itachi’s receding footsteps are almost silent and his own are clumsy and heavy. Because he’s not putting weight on his injured leg, there’s the click of his crutch on the wood and the heavy thump where his other foot hits the ground with all of the momentum and weight of his whole body.

He needs a real doctor or a medic-nin, and he decides to ask Itachi about it in the morning. For now, he just unwraps the leg and takes a look. It’s swollen and yellow. There’s a strange lump on his shin below his knee. He pokes it, very gingerly, and almost screams at the jolt of pain that goes through him. _That’s the bone,_ he dully realizes. It wasn’t like that before, so he assumes it’s from running and fighting and spending most of the day on his feet. He tries to pull the bone into place on the splint, but all it accomplishes is causing a path of tears to run out of Obito’s Sharingan. “Shut up, Obito, you crybaby,” he says under his breath with a gasping laugh. Kakashi himself is managing just fine, but the transplanted eye, not even his, is the one protesting. “An idiot, as always. At least I’m not putting butter on my burns, like you,” he huffs as he unties his mask to check on his face.

The skin is blackened and peeling with pus leaking out from underneath. He haltingly wipes water from the wash basin over it, flinching and hissing as he goes, and Obito’s eye continues to leak salty tears that sting the burn below it. He moves on to wash the rest of himself and tells himself, very firmly, that medical attention is now his top priority. After sleep. He’ll sleep first, build up some chakra, then ask the Akatsuki for directions to a doctor. Then, he’ll think about Danzou. But for now: sleep, doctor.

He washes his clothes in the wash basin and dries them with a wind jutsu. As he puts them back on, he thinks about his conversation with Itachi. There are children out there living his same childhood, and he hasn’t done anything about it, hasn’t considered anyone beyond himself. That, unlike all of his other mistakes, is something that he could have fixed. It’s beyond him now; he’s missed his opportunity. It digs the guilt even deeper, knowing that he could have done something, but he didn’t, and now, the chance is gone. A rogue ninja on the run can’t help children living in and protected by the village. Maybe, after he’s taken down Danzou… 

Kakashi undoes the bedroll and lowers himself in with a sigh. He keeps pondering over his guilt. It’s exhausting, and it starts to drag him toward sleep. It’s not a good idea to fall asleep like this, he knows—the nightmares show up when he does—but he can’t stop thinking about it, and he would feel even more guilty if he did. So, his mind worries and gnaws as his consciousness starts to drift.

It’s not a good sleep, but it’s sleep, and he’s relieved as his awareness starts to drop.

Until all of a sudden, he’s extremely aware. There’s someone else in the room. Kakashi didn’t notice anyone enter—no sound, no light, no smell—but now he can feel someone watching him. Pulse thundering, he rolls up into a defensive crouch and opens Obito’s Sharingan, holding a kunai backhanded to protect his center. “Who’s there?” he demands.

An orange swirled mask pops into view. It tilts its head. 

“Hmmm,” It says with curiosity. “Who’s Obito?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of hand-wavy stuff here re: canon (esp. the akatsuki). Just don't think about it too much :)
> 
> A note on characterization: ANBU Kakashi's hard to write because we don't see much of him, but I'm trying to write him, like, in transition from serious + stickler + brat to the "hip and cool" older Kakashi.
> 
> Next chapter: Can we PLEASE get Kakashi some medical attention? Plus, Tobi.
> 
> As always, I love your comments, much more nutritious than the capt crunch I usually eat for breakfast.


	5. Itachi Gives Kakashi Another Piggy-Back Ride, Which is Cute, but Also Kind of Pathetic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter titles: 
> 
> The Mangekyou Bros 
> 
> OR 
> 
> Kakashi Thinks that Tobi could Possibly be Itachi's Illegitimate Son then Aged Up a la "Spider-Man: Sins Past," Which is One of the Worst Comics in Existence but Despite Everything is Actually Well-Written
> 
> OR 
> 
> Be Careful Who You Make Fun of in High School, but it's Ninja, so be Careful Who You Kill While You're on the Run

Kakashi pulls out another kunai.

“Wah! Put that away!”

Kakashi narrows his eyes. The masked man has been watching him, unnoticed, for some time. Kakashi had hissed about Obito some 45 minutes ago. How did he not notice someone else there?

“Who are _you?_ ” Kakashi demands. The masked man hasn’t attacked yet, not even when Kakashi had his guard down: naked while he washed his clothes, distracted and vulnerable while he assessed his injuries, unfocused and drifting while he tried to fall asleep.

That doesn’t mean he can let his guard down, though; Danzou had waited for months to make his move.

The man’s voice is high and squeaky when he speaks. “Wow, I guess it’s true, then. The Copy Ninja is an idiot. I’m so disappointed.”

“What do you want?” Kakashi bites out. It’s dark, but his eyes still track the masked man and he catches his expressive gestures and hand movements.

“Oh, I just wanted to meet the infamous Hatake Kakashi. I’m such a big fan! Or, I was, you know, until I found out he was an idiot and also a jerk. Poor Tobi, poor Tobi. My dreams are _crushed!_ ” 

Tobi. Itachi had mentioned him; he’d said that Tobi was the one in the orange mask and the one he was hesitant to trust. He’s Akatsuki. Now that Kakashi knows who he is, he can relax slightly. But only slightly. He glares, one eye red and spinning, and says, “Light the lamp.”

Tobi lights it with a jutsu similar to Konoha’s fireball jutsu by doing the seals then bringing his fingers up to his mask. Kakashi hears him blow, the breath hitting clay, and flames appear on his fingers to light the lamp. 

The jutsu looks simple, but it’s very tricky to figure out without instruction because of the way it requires the user to connect chakra strings from the lips to the fingers. Kakashi wonders if Tobi tortured it out of some poor Konoha nin—he knows Itachi would never have given up a technique like that.

The fact that Tobi knows a Konoha jutsu makes him like Tobi even less. “Get out,” he says.

Tobi copies him mockingly. “Light the lamp! Get out!” He says, his voice climbing. “You’re not the boss of me! Next thing I know, you’ll be asking me to do your laundry. No thanks! I saw how dirty that water was!”

“I’m tired. Get out.”

“Make me,” Tobi challenges, crossing his arms.

Kakashi sighs and deflates. He’s so _tired_. He considers using the Sharingan to put Tobi under genjutsu, but he doubts he’d be able to rally enough chakra. “Just tell me what you want so I can get back to sleep,” he tries. 

“Hmm, that’s a good question,” Tobi says. He makes a show of tilting his head up and tapping his finger to his mask in the gesture of thinking. “I thought I was pretty clear, though. I guess you’re both stupid and dumb. And also an idiot,” Tobi says, sounding scathing and gleeful. “I want to know who Obito is.”

“A friend of mine,” he sighs. “Are you happy? Can I sleep now?” Kakashi’s leg throbs from the crouch he’s still standing in and the kunai he’s holding shakes slightly, his muscles’ way of letting him know that they’d rather be resting right now.

“A friend?” Tobi tilts his head again. “Really. Is that why you killed Rin when you promised Obito to protect her? Is that what friends do these days?”

Without thinking, Kakashi’s thrown both his kunai and lunged forward with a spark of lightning in his palm. The kunai pin Tobi to the wall by his robes and Kakashi quickly shocks Tobi to disorient him while he forms the seals for an earth jutsu that brings rock flying in the window to trap Tobi’s hands and legs. He charges his lightning again, and when Tobi orients himself, Kakakshi brings the lightning by his neck.

“How do you know about Rin,” he grinds out. Everything he knows about interrogation tells him to show the subject that he’s in total control and unaffected, but the best he can manage is a growl.

“Hah. I know a lot more about you than you think, Kakashi-kun. More than most people, especially now that I’ve seen beneath that mask of yours. Is that big nasty infection what you’ve been hiding this whole time? Hmm,” Tobi says as he tilts his head to the side and gasps dramatically. “What would little Rin-chan have said if she found out about that? She probably would have been disgusted and cut off all contact with you, and she’d still be alive because you wouldn’t have killed her. Ne, Kakashi-kun? Isn’t that right?”

Kakashi has long since deadened himself against the friend-killer taunts—he knows they’re accurate, and he hates himself for that—but he can’t stand for Tobi to spit Rin’s name in that way. He slams his hand into Tobi’s neck with a charge of electricity to daze him, then pulls it back to bring a chidori forward to shatter his mask—only for Tobi to swirl out of existence and for his chidori to crackle through the wall. 

He stands there, staring blankly and gulping air, with the chirp of chidori still ringing in his ears. Both of his eyes are wide open and he knows he should close the Sharingan before it drains him completely, but he’s frozen, unable to even force the eye shut. He stands there until his legs give out and he stumbles backward.

He’s shaken. He shouldn’t have let his guard down. He’d kept his cool ever since leaving Konoha—even when he was gagging around his shirt as he burned off his own skin, even when he’d heard Danzou was Hokage. He was running on empty, but he knows better than to let himself rest just because he’s exhausted. 

_How did he know about Rin?_

Kakashi still can’t force himself to move; he’s sitting where he crashed and both his eyes are still open. He can blink, apparently, when he’s not thinking about it, but the moment he thinks about closing his eyes, he freezes up. He’s so frustrated he wants to scream, but he can’t even do that, and it builds up in his chest until he feels trapped in his own skin with the scream thumping to get out. 

He’s acutely aware of the chakra exhaustion creeping up on him as all of his energy seeps out of Obito’s Sharingan, and he accepts it like a death sentence as the room fades to black around him.

\----------------------

He wakes up to arguing.

He’s been positioned on the bedroll and the lamp has gone out, but there are small slats of sunlight creeping in from the window. The door is closed, but it’s useless against the sound of Itachi and Konan in a heated discussion because there’s a big whole in the wall from his chidori.

Kakashi would compare Itachi and Konan’s heated discussion to the river where he learned to water walk—calm on the surface, but tension underneath waiting to sweep you away. Kakashi’d been swept away many, many times on that river, had almost drowned when he’d fallen in during the winter and the cold paralyzed him. Itachi’s like that in general, Kakashi thinks. Polite and precise, but he’s killed just as many people as any other missing nin, if not more. He talks to Konan in a low voice.

“He crossed a line.”

Konan’s voice is equally quiet and tense when she replies, “You don’t understand; we can’t.”

“Why not? I _brought_ Kakashi here; he’s a guest, and I’m certain he’ll be willing to take down Danzou with me. I heard Nagato yesterday talk about inviting him to the Akatsuki. Tobi consistently drives members off, he’s unprofessional, and he is a pain to work with.”

“Itachi. Please just trust me when I say there’s more going on here than you know about.”

From the silence, Kakashi can imagine Itachi’s unaffected stare. 

Itachi then says: “The fact that he’s an Uchiha?”

Kakashi sucks in a breath in unison with Konan, then freezes. Hopefully it’s muffled enough by his mask or drowned by Konan’s gasp.

“How did you know that,” she demands, voice low and dangerous.

“My Sharingan. Every time he vanishes, I can see his eye transforming into the Mangekyou through the hole in his mask. It’s apparently a Sharingan technique, but he’s not any Uchiha that I knew.”

No, because all those Uchiha were dead. How, then?

“Don’t tell the other Akatsuki.”

“I haven’t and I won’t, but let me talk to him. What he did with Kakashi is unacceptable.” Kakashi continues to listen, but he’s having a hard time processing that: Itachi is confronting his superior about Tobi because of _him?_ It makes him squirm on the inside; he feels uncomfortable. He doesn’t deserve that from Itachi; he’d failed him as his ANBU captain, and he’d failed with his brother. However, while it does turn his stomach, he can’t deny that it warms him a little bit. Maybe that’s the most disgusting part—he doesn’t deserve any kindness from Itachi, but he can’t help but feel touched by it anyway.

“I’ll talk with him,” Konan says. “You, don’t mention this talk to him, don’t let him know what you know about his vanishing jutsu. But…” Konan strikes Kakashi as very controlled and deliberate, so for her to hesitate in the middle of a sentence surprises him. “...see if you can’t find out what he has against Hatake.”

As he hears her walk out, Kakashi dives into his thoughts. What a way to wake up from chakra exhaustion. There is so much to work through, he doesn’t even know where to start. 

Tobi.

Kakashi closes his eyes and relives the encounter with the perfect clarity of the Sharingan. He looks for tells that Tobi’s an Uchiha, but he doesn’t see the transforming Mangekyou.

He does, however, see other things: Tobi managed to remain unseen in the room while Kakashi treated his injuries—from his new perspective, Kakashi considers that it could have been a strong genjutsu or speed technique aided by the Sharingan, especially if he has the Mangekyou. Tobi’s head is covered by tight black cloth, but there are a few black hairs poking through. Black hair is common and it’s no guarantee of an Uchiha, but there were no Uchiha with light hair in the entire clan. 

Perhaps the most convincing thing is the modified Great Fireball jutsu. The Great Fireball is a Konoha jutsu, but even more specifically, it’s an Uchiha jutsu. By the time Kakashi was a jounin, during the third war, they were asked to share it with village ninja because of its ability to throw flame far ahead, but they shared it with very few. Kakashi’d only learned it from watching Obito talk himself through it as he trained. His original thought about Tobi torturing it out of a Konoha ninja was probably off base—there were other, much more coveted secrets to torture from Konoha, and if that’s how Tobi learned it, he probably would have used it to taunt Kakashi.

Rin… Kakashi doesn’t want to approach this one, but he needs to think through the Uchiha thing before he runs into Tobi again. He was no Uchiha that Itachi knew, meaning that he’d left the village before Itachi had the chance to know him. Kakashi had killed Rin—chidori through the chest, her blood smeared from his fingers to his elbow—right before joining ANBU, around five years ago. He was fourteen, meaning Itachi would have been eleven. If Tobi were in the village five years ago to learn about Rin, Itachi would have known him.

Tobi being an Uchiha does not explain how he knew about Rin. It could, however, contribute to other explanations: 

Tobi is an Uchiha who hates Kakashi for his stolen Sharingan, and has done his research in order to make him suffer. 

Tobi has old spy connections in Konoha and is up-to-date on village gossip and history.

Tobi has met the Sanbi and survived because of his Sharingan. He… somehow… found out about Rin from the tailed beast, and then took the opportunity to taunt Kakashi with it while he was here.

Tobi’s Mangekyou can see memories.

Tobi is just an asshole with a Sharingan.

Tobi is the ghost of Obito, come to haunt him for killing Rin.

Tobi is Itachi’s illegitimate child, aged prematurely by his Mangekyou, which allows him to access people’s secrets.

Kakashi’s first and second ideas are plausible. The rest are him straining for answers, then mocking himself for trying.

He figures it’s been long enough since Itachi and Konan’s conversation to not look suspicious, so he tries to get up. It’s a struggle. He can barely move—he must have been out for quite a while for his chakra to have replenished enough for him to move at all. The last time he passed out from chakra exhaustion, his team had dragged him home, and he hadn’t even been able to turn his head for twelve hours after they’d brought him to the hospital.

Shaky and sluggish, he maneuvers himself out of the room, leaning his whole body on the wall instead of on the crutch. He makes it to a chair only to collapse onto it then slide to the floor.  
Itachi finds him there about fifteen minutes later.

“Yo,” Kakashi says. He acts like he’s just decided to lay awkwardly on the floor for fun. To relax, maybe. Enjoy the grain of the wood and the stray bits of egg on the ground.

Itachi sighs and heaves him up to a sitting position.

“I think I need a medic,” Kakashi says into Itachi’s arm.

Itachi gives him a look that reminds him of Pakkun. “I think you do.”

Kakashi’s on Itachi’s back again as he runs them down to the village.

“Itachi,” Kakashi says from where his head lolls on Itachi’s shoulder, “if we keep doing this, I’m going to start thinking you like me.” 

Itachi says nothing, just continues straight ahead, leaving Kakashi to dangle there with his thoughts. He wants nothing more than to pick Itachi’s brain for information on Tobi, but he can’t bring it up. He doesn’t want Itachi to know he was eavesdropping. Against all odds, they’ve fallen into step and they’re getting along. It’s pathetic, but right now Itachi is the only person Kakashi trusts. He wants Itachi to reciprocate.

So, he settles for puzzling it out in his mind. Tobi’s hair was pure black; it blended into his hood where it stuck out. White or graying hair would have stood out. So, Tobi’s young. Itachi _should_ know him. How could there be another Uchiha no one knew about?

Another Uchiha no one knew about. 

Kakashi’s just solved his genjutsu mystery.

Maybe. He needs to find out what Tobi was doing the night the Hokage was assassinated. He’ll have to talk to Itachi, but… subtly.

He’s never been good at subtlety. He’s quiet, so people assume he can be subtle, and Gai always follows him around—anyone would look subtle next to Gai—but Kakashi is an assassin, not an infiltrator. 

“So,” Kakashi starts conversationally, “I met Tobi last night.”

“Two nights ago,” Itachi corrects.

“Ah… two nights ago, then.” Two nights of forced sleep and it still takes him all of his energy to just stay on Itachi’s back? He needs to be more careful to avoid chakra exhaustion. “He was very rude.”

“Hmm. That sounds like Tobi.”

“I also think…” Here, Kakashi lowers his voice to a whisper to convey that he sees the information as dangerous. “He’s from Konoha.” Itachi doesn’t say anything, but he turns his head and Kakashi feels him tense. “I think he’s from Konoha, but I don’t recognize him from any Bingo Book or hunter mission, so I think he might be here on orders.” The next part, he throws in just for dramatic effect: “He may be a spy to take out the Akatsuki. We don’t know which Hokage he’s loyal to, we have to get out.”

Itachi gives no indication that the information means anything to him. “Why do you think he’s from Konoha?” he asks.

Kakashi explains the modified fireball jutsu and how Tobi knew about his dead friends, then hesitates, like he’s still unsure of his conclusion, before he says, “I think he might be a doujutsu user, maybe a Hyuuga. When he vanished, I saw something, a glint of movement in the eyehole of his mask, like a doujutsu activating. If he has the Byakugan, maybe he does the vanishing by manipulating his own chakra network.”

Kakashi wonders if Itachi will disobey an order from Konan to tell him about Tobi. Apparently not, because he gives a hum in response, and says only, “There’s something about Tobi. Maybe you’re right.”

Kakashi decides to poke and prod at it a little bit more. “I think, maybe if I saw his technique with my Mangekyou, I’d be able to tell. Have you noticed anything?”

Itachi stops. “You have the Mangekyou?” he asks in a tight voice.

Kakashi is genuinely shocked that Itachi didn’t know. “Yes,” he clips out with a bitter laugh. “Why do you think they call me Friend-Killer Kakashi?”

“I thought it was because of your role as a hunter nin in ANBU.” Itachi’s voice is low. To Kakashi, it sounds slightly strangled, like Itachi’s trying to keep it in. He wouldn’t have recognized it if he hadn’t known Itachi a few years ago; to someone else, it might have sounded neutral and controlled, but Kakashi knew its predecessor, eleven-year-old Itachi’s attempts at desensitizing himself. It lends gravity to the situation that Kakashi wasn’t expecting. 

Out of respect for Itachi, he answers in seriousness. “That is… part of it.” He swallows before continuing. “I killed my best friend before joining ANBU.” He stops there, his throat unexpectedly closing up. He hasn’t thought about Rin like that in a long time—his friend. All he’s been able to remember for years is the blood she coughed up as his chidori ripped out her lungs, but now, as he tells Itachi, he’s remembering how she and Gai would gang up on him, how she would kick his legs out from under him in training then sit on him instead of striking, and how she would perch on his windowsill while he cooked them both lunch. It’s like the seal on his tongue is trying to strangle him again—he can’t get any more words out.

“I watched my cousin kill himself,” says Itachi, his eyes straight ahead, no longer turned to look at Kakashi.

“Ah. I’m sorry.” He’d known something about that, before the massacre, but forgotten it once Uchiha family matters were no longer of any concern to the village.

They stand there in silence for a while, Kakashi on Itachi's back with his arms and head draped over his shoulders and Itachi effortlessly holding him up. They’re not quite to the village, still in the outskirts by the stone caves. It’s still and silent, any noise soon suffocated by the stone walls all around them.

Suddenly, Itachi turns his head to look intently at Kakashi. “Someone was after Shisui’s eyes.”

Kakashi connects that immediately with Tobi, and his eye widens.

“Do you think Tobi-”

“No. Tobi’s an Uchiha.” Itachi’s voice picks up speed as he talks, evidence that he’s connecting strings as he speaks, and it’s all coming together. “I _have_ seen what he does when he vanishes; it’s a Mangekyou technique, I can see the tomoe transforming, and he uses it too often. If the eye were a transplant, he would not have the chakra to use it like he does. Shisui’s eye, he was running from someone. They might still have it. Your genjutsu problem—Shisui had a genjutsu like it with his Mangekyou.”

“Danzou.” Kakashi growls. _Danzou has Shisui’s eye,_ he tries to say, but the seal chokes him and his whole body spasms. It’s useful for something, because at least now he knows Itachi’s right. He throws all of his other theories out immediately.

Itachi sets him down, and Kakashi tries to keep himself upright, but most of his focus is on his spinning thoughts. Danzou has Shisui’s Mangekyou Sharingan, somehow. Kakashi remembers his bandaged, covered face, and feels sick at the thought that there’s a Sharingan probably transplanted there, probably inspired by Kakashi’s own transplant. When he pulls himself out of his thoughts to look at Itachi, he can see the focus on his face.

“I have to go back for Sasuke. If Danzou was after Shisui’s eye and figured out a way to use it, he will go after Sasuke for his eyes. I have to go to Konoha.”

“I’m coming with you,” Kakashi says. “I can’t leave Konoha to Danzou.”

Moved by sudden motivation, he tries to get up before remembering his chakra exhaustion. Itachi, reliable as ever, is there to catch him with a gentle laugh. “But first, I’m taking you to a medic.”

The rest of the way into town, Kakashi is overwhelmed and he can’t get his brain to leave him in peace. He shuts down his thoughts of Danzou because they only frustrate him—he can’t even move right now, let alone travel to Konoha, break in, and assassinate the Hokage.

Before entering, Itachi puts a henge over Kakashi. Either he’s less paranoid than Kakashi has been, or he has more trust in the strength of his henge to withstand scrutiny from ninja. Kakashi decides to trust the henge as well.

Where they end up cannot be considered a hospital; it looks like someone’s house. “We’re here to see Sugita-sensei,” Itachi tells the ninja who answers the door. He’s about their age—in his teens—with a rusted Rain headband tied over a dirty white apron and a haunted look in his eyes.

“He’s dead,” the ninja replies.

Itachi bows, and Kakashi slides on his back. “I’m sorry for your loss. Please let me know if there is anything I can do.”

“Thank you. I’m- I was his apprentice, so I’m now the village head medic. Come in. My name’s Suzu.”

Itachi sets him down on a table. Kakashi hopes that the table is reserved for patients only and that Suzu doesn’t take his meals there. While Suzu checks him over, Itachi engages him in polite conversation. Kakashi tunes them out, until the grip on his leg hardens and doesn’t let up. They’re talking about the death of the previous head medic. 

“I did the autopsy,” Suzu spits. ”I’m the only medic in town, now, so I did the autopsy, of course.” Itachi looks politely interested. “Do you know what I found?” Suzu hisses. “He had a hole, straight through his chest, and was covered in electricity burns. His organs were liquefied. He was going on a quick mission with a group of jounin to keep up his taijutsu skills by chasing after a merchant and a genin team, and we find him in a puddle like that. Do you know what they said about it?” Kakashi feels extremely awkward, especially when he feels tears land on him. “They said the genin team took them out with poison! They’re trying to cover it up!”

“You must be very upset,” Itachi says sympathetically.

“I am. And you know what else? Apparently, Konoha’s Hokage was killed the same way a few weeks ago by Sharingan Kakashi. It was _him_. And they’re still saying Sugita-sensei was killed by three _genin_. I’m-”

Kakashi interrupts him with a cough. “Excuse me, Suzu-san? How does my leg look?”

Suzu rushes to fuss over Kakashi. “Oh, I’m so sorry, please forgive me, I’m so sorry, I’ll get right back to your leg. I got carried away there, it’s just, It’s only been a few days, you know, and now I’m all of a sudden the head medic, along with everything else, thank you for being patient with me,” he rambles as his hands glow green with medical chakra.

In the end, Kakashi walks out on his own two feet with a small chakra infusion, a fixed rib, and a large burn scar on his face but no peeling skin and no leaking pus. His leg is partially healed. The bone was apparently splintered and fractured all over, and Suzu only had enough training to speed up the body’s natural healing so he couldn’t fix all of the damage. “I’d recommend you find a more advanced medic,” he said. “I can heal it partially, but if you want it fully healed, the medic will have to break the bone again.” Kakashi accepts the consequences and lets Suzu partially heal his leg. It still hurts and he swears he can feel all of the parts grinding against each other, but at least he can walk, even if it’s with a limp.

“You killed Sugita-sensei?” Itachi asks blandly as they hike back.

“I didn’t know he was the town medic,” is Kakashi’s excuse.

“Don’t tell Konan or Nagato what you know about Tobi.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll tell them we’re going after Danzou, then as soon as you recover your chakra, we can leave.”

“Okay.

Itachi smiles. “It’s good to see you walking again, especially since now I don’t have to carry you on my back.”

“Thank you.” Kakashi smiles back at him and wonders if he could call Itachi his friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter:
> 
> Kakashi and Tobi do NOT get along. Did they ever really get along when they were teammates though? Not really.
> 
> I did a lot of things this chapter with a purpose in mind, especially for characterization, which I'm proud of. Let me know what part you liked best :)


	6. Would Tobi Please Just Shut Up?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annoying Tobi Obito is the best Obito and you can't change my mind
> 
> Alternate title: Who Should be the One to Seduce Orochimaru?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your comments :) someone asked last time if Obito was pretending to be Madara in this story. The answer is yes, I just totally forgot that Madara and Itachi had any contact, so we'll just... pretend that didn't happen lol

Kakashi sleeps for another half a day and wakes up with fully-charged chakra. He looks at his scarred face in the mirror—the outlines of his own fingers are visible on his face, and even with his mask on, the ends of two of the finger burns show on his right cheek below his eye. _No one will ever fall in love with me now,_ he whines to himself. _I’ll be like Jiraiya, leave the village to hide my shame._ Then, _well, I’m ahead of schedule on that part._

He tests the skin by stretching his mouth wide and turning his head side to side. Where before it would tear open and leak, it’s now only taut. He pokes it through the mask; it feels rough and brittle, but it probably can’t heal any further. He almost doesn’t want to wear the mask any more—it takes away some of the appeal if he actually is hiding a horrifying scar beneath it—but he can’t just stop wearing it; it’s complicated. 

In the main room, Nagato, Konan, and Itachi are sitting around the table eating fish. Nagato gestures commandingly to a fourth spot that’s been set out, and Kakashi obliges. They exchange good mornings. Kakashi paces himself as he eats so he’s not the first or last to finish. It’s easy with his current mask; he just slips the chopsticks under it. 

“You and Itachi are going back to Konoha to topple the government, is that right?” Nagato asks.

That’s not quite how Kakashi would have put it—he’d say that they’re going to save Konoha from Danzou. “Sure,” he replies.

“The Akatsuki will back you. Our goal is peace, and Danzou sounds like the type of person who will get in the way.”

“Thank you,” Kakashi acknowledges with a nod.

Nagato glances at Konan, then continues. “We’d like you to be a member of the Akatsuki.”

Leaning back in his chair, Kakashi laces his fingers behind his head, glances up at the ceiling, then pins Nagato with a stare. “Why?”

“We could use your-”

“No, I mean, why would I want to?”

They’re all looking at him flatly, like he’s an idiot. Seems like Tobi’s not the only one to think so. “Protection,” Konan says, “from Konoha. We have bases and members all over; we can help you hide. We can send Itachi with you on your mission. We have supplies, money, access to information.” She gives him a small smile then, “Mostly, though, we share the same goals. We can accomplish them together. Peace, freedom from tyrants.”

Kakashi taps his face, like he’s thinking, but he’d already decided when he heard Konan mention it to Itachi. “Maa… do I get to wear the cute uniform?”

Konan’s eyes laugh, even though her voice doesn’t. “Yes.”

“In that case, count me in.”

The new robe is wonderful. It’s not Kakashi’s usual style, which can be described as Konoha standard issue, but it’s clean and sturdy. The red clouds are a nice touch, at the same time stylish and intimidating. On Itachi, it makes his Sharingan stand out. Konan looks regal; Nagato looks fluid and deadly. Kakashi just looks like a traitor. Which he is, technically. He won’t follow the custom of the slashed headband, though; he’s still loyal to Konoha, and he’d ditched the headband anyway.

He and Itachi gear up. Kakashi reluctantly straps a sword to his back. Recently, he’s been relying more on ninjutsu and taijutsu, but with his leg how it is, his kicks will be useless and he’s fairly certain that if anyone grabs his foot and tugs, his bones will fall out. Using a sword will probably hinder his mobility and speed, but it should cover for his leg. 

Itachi brings nothing but a scroll of kunai and throwing stars and an extra cord to tie up his hair. Kakashi has a little bit of food and they’ll scrounge up more on the way. They’re not going straight to Konoha; overthrowing a ninja village takes some prep work, as Kakashi’s learning.

There’s no forest cover in Rain Country, so they cover themselves with henge and stick to the main roads. Anyone to catch a chunk of their conversation, though, would probably be a little suspicious of them.

“If we just assassinate him, his ROOT would still exist, and I know they at least have some sort of connection to Orochimaru.”

“Would he be hard to kill, do you think?”

“Maa, probably, but maybe you could seduce him, Itachi. He’d never be expecting it.”

“Mm. Why not you? I’ve heard that people think scars are attractive.”

They save their serious conversation for night when they stop and make camp. It’s raining, but luckily Itachi’s familiar with the area and leads Kakashi to a cave. Their boots are soaked and muddy, so they take them off to let them dry. Kakashi laughs silently to himself: here he is, in Rain Country, with Itachi Uchiha of the Uchiha massacre, in a cave, and they’re taking off their boots like they’re entering a house. “Home sweet home,” he sighs.

“I’ll start a fire so we can dry out our things,” Itachi offers.

Kakashi could easily dry them with a wind jutsu, but a fire would be nice anyway, and there’s a little overhang at the cave entrance to protect a fire from the rain. “Thank you.”

As they sit by the fire, Kakashi pulls out some of the jerky he saved before finding Itachi, and they eat it as they plan.

“I’ve been thinking,” Kakashi starts. “If we take out Danzou, we have to make sure there’s someone to take his place. What I was saying earlier about Orochimaru-”

“I don’t think he’s the type to be seduced,” Itachi says, looking up from the fire with a smile.

“Maa, if the scar over my eye isn’t enough, I could always take off my mask to show him the handprints. I’d be impossible to resist.” Dragging a hand through his hair with a sigh, Kakashi shifts to cross his legs and lean forward. “We do need to make sure he won’t step in and become Hokage, though.”

Itachi nods. “Orochimaru’s strong, but I don’t trust him.”

“You don’t even know the half of it. I... did some digging, in ANBU. He-” the seal chokes him before he can tell Itachi about Orochimaru’s experiments on children. Apparently, Danzou and Orochimaru are working more closely together than he thought, if Danzou’s seal prevents him from talking about Orochimaru.

Tenzou…Kakashi’s not sure if he’s done any good for Tenzou, or if he ended up hurting him more in the end. Again, he finds himself hoping that Tenzou has enough faith in him to not believe he’s a traitor, but also that he has the common sense to keep his mouth shut and his head down. Does Itachi know that Konoha has a wood-style user? It feels like too big of a village secret to tell him, even though Kakashi believes he’s loyal to Konoha. Most of the village doesn’t even know about Tenzou, but it could be important information since they’re planning a coup. Then again, there was also that man that Kakashi stole from who was feeding information to Iwa, and he’d mentioned Tenzou, so maybe it wasn’t that much of a village secret anyway. Kakashi hesitates. 

“I think that there are some people in the village that don’t believe I killed the Hokage. We could work with them, but I still don’t know if it would be enough to do everything we need to.”

“Who?” Itachi asks.

“I overheard Shikaku say that he thinks something’s off. I could probably convince him. And… Maito Gai. I haven’t heard anything, but I think he’ll take my side. Ugh. If only we could find Jiraiya and Tsunade.”

“You think they would believe you?”

“I… don’t know. Jiraiya’s a seal master, so maybe the seal could convince him. But I don’t know Tsunade very well, and no one knows where she is.”  
Itachi doesn’t reply, just stares into the fire, looking very concentrated. Interesting. Kakashi affects a casual tone, leaning back on his hands, but his eye watches Itachi carefully.

“Maa, Itachi, if you knew where Tsunade was, would you tell me?”

Itachi’s eyebrows raise, but he gives no other reaction. “Of course.”

Feeling a little lost, Kakashi sighs. How are they supposed to do this? It’s only two of them against what’s probably all of Konoha, and who would be the next Hokage? Where are they even going right now? They’d left the Akatsuki hideout and walked the opposite direction of Konoha; now they’re just sitting in a cave.

“I have an idea, though,” Itachi says, interrupting Kakashi’s hopelessness.

“Oh?”

“No matter what they believe, Jiraiya and Tsunade have both heard that you killed their sensei. At the very least, they’re curious. At the most, they want revenge and will stop at nothing to kill you. We just go to Tsunade’s last known location in Earth Country and stop disguising you. We can drop the henge and give you a slashed Konoha headband. They will come to us.”

“So will Danzou’s hunter nin.”

“We can take them.”

“And if Tsunade ends up killing me before I can explain?”

“I’ll take your Sharingan out before Danzou can get to it.”

How reassuring. “Keep it away from Tobi, too. I don’t trust him. Just destroy it.” That way, Obito’s gift doesn’t end up with anyone it wasn’t intended for. Kakashi wonders, does Obito have both eyes in the afterlife? Or is he missing an eye there because Kakashi still has it here, in the land of the living? Either way, Kakashi won’t let anyone take Obito’s eye.

Itachi nods. Kakashi feels like Itachi would understand: Danzou stole and used his cousin’s eye to orchestrate the Hokage’s assassination. He probably still has it, using it for his underhanded purposes that Shisui would have fought against. _That he did_ fight against, with his life. 

Kakashi is very deliberate in his actions, ever since Obito gave him his eye. He protects the village; he kills traitors; he fights his enemies with respect, never toying with them, always killing with deadly efficiency. He visits Rin and Sensei’s graves. He visits his father’s grave, something he never did before Obito, because he knows that Obito admired him and would want Kakashi to visit. He tries to do what Obito would do, because he wants to honor the sacrifice he made, giving up part of himself for Kakashi. Kakashi no longer uses ninja rules as an excuse to treat people badly, and he stops to help children and old ladies on the street because he would be betraying Obito if he didn’t. Kakashi tries to give up the bad parts of himself for Obito. Of course, he’s failed that, now, letting the Hokage be killed and then running from the village.

Solemnly, Kakashi nods back at Itachi.

They both startle, drawing their weapons, when they hear a voice whine, “You don’t trust me? That hurts.”

Itachi puts away the kunai. “Tobi,” he greets.

Kakashi also puts away his weapon, but only to trade the sword for a kunai, which would be much more effective in the close quarters of the cave. As Tobi’s mask comes into view from the back of the cave, Kakashi tilts his head to look at the stone ceiling and curses whatever Gods decided to let Tobi exist.

“Itachi-senpai,” Tobi replies cheerily to Itachi, then, swiveling to look at Kakashi, “and the Copy Idiot. So good to see you both here.”

Kakashi says nothing. Their last encounter went terribly, and Tobi got the drop on him. It’s not often that anyone evades Kakashi, so he observes, Obito’s Sharingan open and his eyes narrowed. Just how dangerous is Tobi?

“Do you have food?” Tobi asks. “I’m so hungry!”

Itachi’s eyes flicker to Kakashi, who’s still holding a bag of jerky. 

“No,” Kakashi says.

Tobi joins them at the fire, drawing his knees up to his chest and holding his hands close to the warmth. Kakashi can’t make any observations on his hands because he’s wearing gray gloves, but his toes are showing out of his boots, and his right foot looks strange. Tobi’s mask is ceramic, but much thicker than Kakashi’s ANBU mask.

“Quit staring!” Tobi cries. “Itachi-senpai, your idiot here is looking at me like he’s going to eat me! I don’t like it!” Then, he sees jerky in Itachi’s hand and turns to Kakashi, who hasn’t bothered to hide the bag. Tobi reaches his hand up to hit him; Kakashi holds up the kunai. “You _do have food!_ You’re so mean. Do you treat everyone this way? Is _this_ why your father decided to kill himself? He couldn’t stand living with you?”

Without thinking, Kakashi charges up the kunai with electricity and throws it.

“Uh-uh, Bakashi,” Tobi says as he shakes his head, Kakashi’s kunai caught between two of his fingers. “Can I call you that, since you’re such an idiot?”

Kakashi forces himself to calm down. As he clenches his fists and bites his cheek, Tobi giggles and whispers to Itachi, who sits stonefaced. Kakashi’s heard countless taunts about his father, but he stopped overreacting like this when he realized it made him look childish. What was it about Tobi? Kakashi also overreacted when he mentioned Obito and Rin. After he’s tamped down on his anger, he ponders, then concludes that it’s the fact that Tobi doesn’t know him. Kakashi’s used to whispers in the village, the occasional snide comment, but he bears it. They are the people he protects; it’s his duty to shoulder it, and he will shoulder anything for Konoha. 

Tobi is a stranger. Kakashi has no idea who he is, or how he knows the details of Kakashi’s life. He’s obviously dangerous, though, and has something against Kakashi. 

Now that he’s calmed down and figured out why Tobi bugs him so much, Kakashi closes the Sharingan and easily puts on a droopy stare.

“Maa, sure, but if you do, I’m not giving you any jerky.” Kakashi won’t be giving Tobi any jerky anyway. He hides it away so he can pretend it’s all gone when Tobi asks for some.

“Oh, I wasn’t that hungry anyway,” Tobi says, waving a hand. “Bakashi.” Kakashi hopes his eye isn’t twitching; it would ruin his calm facade. He forces his eye to curve to show Tobi that he’s smiling.

“Okay,” he says as he pulls out the jerky and eats another piece. Tobi likes his pride, then, if he wouldn’t compromise for the food he clearly wanted. It’s not quite a weakness, but Kakashi can probably still exploit it. He files that thought away for later.

“We weren’t expecting you,” Itachi says to Tobi.

“Ah, I just wanted to help you guys out! I’ve never assassinated a Hokage before, I thought it would be fun! Oops, silly me, I forgot, I actually have done that before, but, hey, you know what they say!”

Kakashi has absolutely no idea what “they say,” and the Sandaime was the only Hokage to be assassinated, so he’s fairly sure that’s a lie. He looks pleadingly at Itachi. “Is there any way we can get him to leave us alone?”

Itachi purses his lips and shakes his head, and Kakashi puts his face in his hands. He laments his lack of reading material—a good book can block out even the most annoying people—then announces that he’s going to sleep.

No one can tell when Kakashi is faking sleep; he’s built up the skill with years of practice. It started on missions when he would travel with Minato-sensei, who wouldn’t wake him up for watch if he knew that Kakashi hadn’t slept, and Kakashi didn’t sleep on missions because he didn’t know when he’d be hit with a nightmare and compromise their stealth by screaming. Kakashi learned to regulate his breathing and twitch his eyes the right way, and soon enough, Minato-sensei let him take watch. Since then, he’s learned that it’s a useful tool for both information gathering and to avoid conversation, both of which he would appreciate right now.

Kakashi knows when Tobi believes that he’s asleep, because he stops telling Itachi how ugly Kakashi is and how he killed his father and his sensei and his only friends. That was only for Kakashi’s benefit. Instead, he asks Itachi about their plans. Itachi fills him in, and Kakashi’s impressed with his acting abilities. Itachi knows that Tobi’s an Uchiha, that he’s dangerous, but he responds convincingly to Tobi’s mask of harmlessness. As he explains their plan to him in simple words with exaggerated inflection, Kakashi can hear a smile in his voice at Tobi’s antics. Ha. Easy for Itachi to do, because Tobi doesn’t insult him or drag up his failures to spit them in his face; he’s only annoying to Itachi, not rude or cruel.

Why is Tobi like that with Kakashi? Itachi murdered Tobi’s entire family; why doesn’t Tobi hate _him?_

Kakashi mumbles and flings an arm out.

“He still sleeps the same,” Itachi tells Tobi, now sounding less like he’s talking to a child and more like he’s talking to a comrade. “He was my captain in ANBU. I learned a lot from him—he’s a great ninja… Do you know him? You act like you have a vendetta.”

Tobi groans. “Who _doesn’t_ know Copy Ninja Bakashi?

“It’s more than that. I can tell.”

“That’s none of your concern. Get your nose out of my personal life, and I’ll stay out of yours, hm? How’s little Sasuke-chan?”

“He’s fine, thanks for asking,” Itachi says politely. “And your family, Tobi?”

“Oh, they’re all dead.” Kakashi almost blows his cover by flinching at Tobi’s voice—it’s gone from squeaky and annoying to steady and low. “You can ask Kakashi about it. He knows.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Kakashi’s the one who should be, but I’ll make him pay for it, sooner or later. Ah, don’t worry, Itachi. I’ll let him finish out your little mission, and I’m not planning to kill him, just… make him suffer, like I suffered. He may lose a limb or two—that’s unavoidable, it’s what he did to me—and then, of course, I’ll kill everyone he ever loved!” Tobi is starting to sound a little bit crazed. Kakashi doesn’t like it. “I already-”

“Tobi,” Itachi interrupts. It’s the first time Kakashi’s ever heard him interrupt anyone. “Please, be civil. This mission is bigger than us; if we don’t kill Danzou, I’m worried he’ll start a war and kill thousands in the process. I know you want peace; work with us.”

“I’m always civil, senpai,” Tobi squeaks, back to his usual voice. “But I’ll play nice with Bakashi, just for you.”

Their conversation ends there, leaving Kakashi confused. Tobi obviously still has all his limbs, and apparently he doesn’t consider the Uchiha his family. Kakashi is unsure whether he should feel threatened or not by Tobi’s threat to rip off his limbs and kill everyone he loves. Everyone he loves is already dead, but there are a few people he’s rather fond of, and he doesn’t know if Tobi would actually go after them.

He lies awake, wishing he were in Konoha, far away from Tobi. He wishes Danzou were dead and he didn’t have to kill him; he wishes he didn’t have to confront Tsunade. He runs through scenarios in his head—Tsunade slamming him into the ground so hard his heart stops and he dies on the spot. Danzou tenderly scooping Obito’s eye out of his head. Tobi pulling off his limbs one by one, screeching in his annoying voice. His father kneeling next to him, guiding his hands and the tantou they hold into Kakashi’s stomach while Obito glares at him with one eye, accusing him for wasting the chance he’d given him while blood leaks around Kakashi’s hands that he desperately presses to his abdomen to keep his intestines from slipping out.

Kakashi wakes up gasping and clutching his stomach. He lies awake until morning, refusing this time to slip into sleep. In the morning, he takes a soldier pill and the slashed Konoha headband from Itachi like a death sentence, and they start toward Earth Country.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my best lol but there had to be something in between the last chapter and the next one. I kept writing "Tobi" as "Obito"... I tried to fix them, but there might still be a few left in there. Updates might slow down a bit because of school. By December, I'll have an English degree, and I'll still be mixing up "whole" and "hole" lol.
> 
> Next chapter: you can always find Tsunade by following the trail of the debtor's prisons she's escaped and destroyed
> 
> If you tell me what you liked about this chapter I will love you forever <3


	7. Enter: TSUNADE!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsunade <3

A week later, Kakashi leaves Itachi and Tobi to swagger in the gates and start a fight. It’s proving more difficult than he expected—why are these people so _nice?_ — but he finally accomplishes his goal by pushing over a bakery stall in the market. As the whole thing tumbles down, Kakashi’s hand stays outstretched and everyone’s eyes find him. “Oops,” he says with a smile.

A middle-aged woman comes running at him with a sword. For maximum rumor potential, Kakashi doesn’t even move, just opens his eye with a genjutsu that stops her in her tracks. 

“Ah, I don’t know if that’s the greatest idea.” Kakashi says, then mentally steels himself for his coming performance by slouching, sighing, and trying not to roll his eyes. “Do you know who you’re attacking? I’m Hatake Kakashi. The Copy Ninja. I’m a ninja, and I copy. They call me the man with one thousand jutsu, probably because I know about a thousand jutsu. They call me Sharingan Kakashi. I got that name because I’m Kakashi, and I have the Sharingan. Don’t cross me.” Then, because he doubts the lazy words he flung on them have left any impression, he floats dirt up into the clouds with an earth jutsu to darken the sky, then calls lightning to his hand. The villagers are as silent as dust as the sound of his chidori weaves through them. “I’m going to the Wooden Water Village up North,” he says, looking at the terrified people cast in the blue of lightning. “Warn them.” 

After he flickers out of the village, he sends Pakkun back in to hide money under the wreckage of the stall he knocked over and grab some meat buns. 

“Thanks, Pakkun,” Kakashi says, bending down to scratch behind Pakkun’s ears.

“You’re looking better, boss.”

“Mm, you think so?”

“Hah! The last time I saw you, you couldn’t even stay on your feet. Good to see you’ve found a healer.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going after Tsunade right now, so I may not be intact for that much longer,” he says with an absent smile under his mask.

“Hey, Kakashi. Look at me, kid.” Pakkun waits for Kakashi to drag his eyes down from the skyline. “We’ve got your back. Even for the non-ninja stuff, okay? You need to be carried up a hill again, you summon us. The pack likes to know how you’re doing; keep us in the loop, yeah?”

“Thanks, Pakkun, I appreciate it,” he says. And he really does appreciate it. Pakkun isn’t even tall enough to reach his knees, they’ve only known each other for a few years, and Kakashi’s technically his leader—not to mention the fact that Pakkun is a dog—but somehow, he’s the closest thing to a parent that Kakashi has. It would probably be fair to say that Kakashi has a pretty skewed experience with parents, though, so maybe he’s just clinging to the only one who’s expressed care for him since he fled Konoha.

“Anytime, Kakashi. You know I mean it.”

“I know you do.” Not wanting Pakkun to leave quite yet, Kakashi tries to think of another task for him, and an idea sparks in his mind. “Hey, while you’re here, can you go get a read on someone I’m travelling with? He calls himself Tobi, but that’s not his real name. He’s the one in the orange mask. The one that’s not Itachi.”

Pakkun’s eyes widen and his forehead furrows at the mention of Itachi, but he nods and follows Kakashi to meet up with his group.

“Yo,” Kakashi says when he sees them, lifting two fingers and tossing a meat bun to Itachi, who looks at it, awed, like he’s never seen a meat bun before. “Tobi, you want one?” He doesn’t wait for a reply, just tosses a second bun to Tobi. Kakashi is trying an unaffected, I-don’t-care, I-refuse-to-acknowledge-your-vendetta approach with Tobi. With Tobi’s comments a few nights ago about his father and how he spat vitriol about Kakashi until he thought he was asleep, Kakashi’s come to the conclusion that Tobi wants him to hate him back. Therefore, the best way to beat Tobi at this game is to act like they’re friends.

Tobi catches the meat bun but doesn’t eat it; instead, it disappears in a swirl. Is that the same jutsu he uses to appear and disappear?

“How did it go?” Itachi asks.

“Fine. On to the next stop.”

“Yo,” says Pakkun.

Surprised, Itachi and Tobi look down at him. Tobi squawks and jumps, but Kakashi sees how there’s a beat between his initial reaction and the squawking—he’s faking it.

“Itachi, Tobi, this is Pakkun. Say hi, Pakkun!”

“I already did.”

“You’re right!” Kakashi replies, smiling brightly. “How rude of my companions to not greet you back.”

Itachi bows and introduces himself, but Tobi whines.

“I am not going to be polite to a _dog!”_

Pakkun looks to Kakashi for the go-ahead. Kakashi nods.

“Wah! Get off me!” Tobi shouts while trying to kick Pakkun off from where his jaws are clinging to the hem of his robe.

“Ah, sorry Tobi!” Kakashi says sheepishly, scratching at the back of his head like he’s not the one who gave the Pakkun the signal to go after Tobi in the first place. “Pakkun. I’ll see you later.” To Itachi and Tobi, “Off we go.”

When they made it to earth country a few days ago, Kakashi had entered a town to start a fight like he did today. It was easier to get people to attack him; the whole town was on edge after a debtor’s prison had been destroyed. Kakashi saw the ruins and heard the people talk about the crazy drunk lady who’d blasted through the wall on the way out. 

Kakashi connected it immediately with Tsunade—every time Jiraiya would come back to the village and Kakashi was assigned to follow him around with an ANBU detail, he’d spend about half of his time moping about Tsunade. “She won’t listen to me!” he’d complain to his old friends. And to the ANBU he knew were tailing him when he got drunk at the bar: “She _hates_ me! She had four debt collectors after her, and she wouldn’t let me pay off any of it! It’s her damn _pride_ again! Refusing to accept help and then resenting _me_ because I offered! You all think _I’m_ a drunk, you should see _her._ Gah! Let her rot in debtor’s prison, then. See if I care!”

Kakashi had a fun time watching the horror build in Itachi’s eyes as he knocked the legendary Tsunade off her idealized pedestal. Was this how his father felt when he told Kakashi that babies didn’t come from summoning contracts? Maybe Kakashi did want kids after all. He shut that thought down quickly—he refused to do to another child what had been done to him. But he still felt a sort of glee at Itachi’s expression.

They left that interaction with a better idea of where they were headed and what they were looking for.

After Kakashi’s fight in town today, they have one stop left on their list before they’re ready to head to Tsunade’s last known location: the Wooden Water village. A week should be enough time for the information to reach Tsunade if she’s still in Earth Country.

They reach the next town in two days. It's a farming community with packed dirt for streets and ordered fields outside the walls. The guards cower in terror when Kakashi shows up at the gate. What’s the point of gatekeepers if they let in anyone who scares them enough? Isn’t it their job to keep people like Kakashi _out?_ Konoha’s guards, at least, stand their ground to scary foreign ninja, even if they spend most of the day goofing around and spitting from the top of the walls. 

Kakashi strolls in and empties the main street with a Great Fireball jutsu. The people scatter behind walls, shops, and their neighbors.

“Who will fight me?” he calls, then goes through the usual introductions, Sharingan Kakashi, the ninja with a thousand jutsu, all that. He should have been doing it this way from the beginning; it’s way easier to terrify people when he starts off with shooting fire in the streets.

He sighs when no one steps forward. “If I were here to burn your village to the ground, would you all hide? Do none of you have any desire to protect your loved ones?” 

A young girl, twelve or thirteen, breaks free from her mother’s arms and stumbles into the street to meet him. 

“I’ll fight you!” she screams. “I won’t let you burn my sisters!” As the townspeople gasp and her mother cries, Kakashi’s stomach flips.

He’s made these people scared so he can achieve his goal—he doesn’t feel any guilt over that. What he feels is some sort of anger for the girl. Kakashi was never planning to hurt anyone in the town, so nothing bad will happen to her, but here she is, surrounded by adults—people who should be protecting her—and somehow the task of standing up to the invading missing-nin falls on her shoulders. There must be a few people in the village with some sort of combat experience—the gatekeepers, maybe, the middle-aged men and women who are old enough to have fought in the last war. 

He stands still. The girl squeezes her fists tight and brings them up close to her neck with her elbows sticking out in the stance of someone who’s never fought before, not even a childish brawl like he and Obito used to fall into. Kakashi stares at her, frozen. This girl isn’t like the genin team he met during his initial run from Konoha. She’s younger, she’s terrified, and she has no sensei or disguised ex-Konoha ANBU operative to protect her. Even her mother stays back, trying to shield her younger daughters instead.

Kakashi’s about to grab her and shunshin away to give her the meat bun he saved and tell her how brave she is when someone comes staggering out of a bar at the other end of the street. 

Setting his feet, he pulls himself from his slouch and flicks up the borrowed headband to open the Sharingan.

It’s Tsunade, stumbling out to see what’s going on.

Kakashi had been hoping that she’d confront him in Wooden Water, privately, and he’d have a chance to explain, but instead, he stands in an evacuated street with civilians cowering on all sides and a young girl standing resolutely in front of him while her mother cries. The smell of baked clay from his Great Fireball jutsu rises from the streets.

He can tell she’s drunk; Obito’s Sharingan catches the unsteady anger that heats up her cheeks, and then the belated expression contorting her face as she realizes she’s angry. If Kakashi were trying to kill her, he would have used this moment to fling a kunai at her face then appear behind her with a chidori through her heart before she collected her wits. He can’t attack her first, though, even if it would give him an advantage; he needs her to listen to him.

Instead, he uses a substitution jutsu to get the brave girl to safety, leaving a sign advertising harvest equipment in her place. Tsunade stalks forward with her hands glowing green and hovering over her heart and neck; Kakashi matches her pace, his new robe just brushing and swishing over the ground. By the time they reach each other past the signpost in the middle of the street, Tsunade looks completely sober and deadly serious. Her hands no longer glow with green healing chakra and her eyes narrow. She won’t meet his eyes, ready to fight and wary of the Sharingan.

“Tsunade-hime,” Kakashi says. His arms are open, placating, but he keeps his feet set. “Any chance you don’t attack me and we can just have a friendly chat?”

Her answer is to yell and punch at his head with full strength. Instead of crashing into his head, the punch hits another sign that Kakashi substituted for himself, shattering it and sending pieces of wood in all directions. He slams up a mud wall then jumps up to run along the top of it, firing down kunai at Tsunade. She’s a close-combat taijutsu expert, so he needs to keep his distance. Staying above her would be ideal; it allows him to attack her and stay out of her reach. 

Tsunade rips his mud wall out of the ground with a kick, and it slides back before it topples over onto the village gate. Kakashi leaps off and pulls out his sword in the air with a flip to build momentum. Tsunade doesn’t dodge—just crosses her hands at the wrists to catch it with her forearms and tugs. Instead of fighting for it, Kakashi lets go and sends his Tunneling Gopher jutsu to push her foot forward and send her off balance. As she catches herself gracefully with her hand on the ground, he charges a chidori and grabs the blade of the metal sword, shocking her just enough that her arm gives out and she crashes down.

Kakashi calls up earth chains to keep her there, but the moment they touch her, a poof reveals that she’s replaced herself with a cart, and the ground around him crumbles, caught up in a shockwave Tsunade sent his way with a punch.

Kakashi’s eyes widen at her strength, and before he can react, a large tank of water flies at him. He tries to leap away, but his bad leg gives out from the strain and the uneven footing and he stumbles. The tank clips his leg and he goes down, followed by the tank, which ends up on top of him cracking and spraying water. Tsunade lands next to him with an earth-shattering boom and drags him out from under the tank by the hair. He thinks his leg is broken again. He also thinks, _she’s ripping out all of my hair,_ and _I’ll be bald before I’m twenty,_ then, _I won’t make it to twenty. I’m going to die._

“Now, Hatake,” Tsunade snarls. “It’s about time someone knocked you down.” She doesn’t look at him where he’s trapped by the water tank and her inhuman grip, just rips an opening into the metal of the tank with her free hand and yanks him up to shove his head under. It knocks on the metal on the way down, gets sliced on the sharp edge.

Kakashi can’t process anything besides his need to breathe. He wasn’t prepared, and he took a lungful of water. He struggles against the water and Tsunade’s iron grip and he can’t stop his body from trying to cough the water from his lungs, which only lets more water in through his mouth and nose. It tastes like blood. He’s struggling and choking when Tsunade pulls him up for a short gasp of air only to shove him down again. He panics. He’s going to die. 

An eerie calm hits him over the head and he’s finally able to shut off the panic. He decides to give Tsunade what she wants, and even though he’s screaming and dying, goes limp.

She pulls him up from the water and ties his legs with ninja wire. Kakashi coughs and chokes and sputters, his chest heaving, but forces his body to relax and lets his limbs flop. He’s almost helpless like this, but if he’d waited until he actually passed out, he would be much worse off. He waits, then when she reaches for his arms to tie them together, he turns his head, Sharingan ready. Tsunade turns slightly at the movement, and Kakashi’s caught her in the Tsukuyomi.

\----------------------

He wasn’t thinking, hadn’t prepared a location in his mindscape beyond a plea: _get me out of here._

The serenity of Konoha’s memorial stone hits him in the gut.

He’s breathing normally. He’s standing normally, his leg strong and unbroken. Birds chirp from leafy branches that cast dappled shade over the stone and the grass around it. There’s something in the air that’s distinctly Konoha—maybe it’s the light weight of humidity, or the scent of young trees and bark. Maybe it’s the ghosts belonging to the names on the memorial stone.

Maybe it’s Tsunade cursing at him from where she’s tied to a tree.

“You rotten piece of shit! Let me go or the moment this jutsu fades I’ll smash your head so far into the ground you end up in Whirlpool!”

Tsunade absolutely has the ability to follow up on that threat. Kakashi didn’t think beyond capturing Tsunade in the genjutsu, but now he realizes: he has until his chakra runs out to convince Tsunade not to kill him.

“Tsunade-hime. Please, hear me out. I have some intel you need to know.”

She spits on the ground in front of him. “If you think I need anything from _you,_ you need to get your head out of your ass and probably _brain surgery._ A complete lobotomy. I’d do it for you, gladly.”

He slides a hand into the pocket of his genjutsu ANBU pants and chuckles. “You need me to untie you from that tree, don’t you?”

Tsunade screams in rage and tries to tear herself free. It won’t work; this genjutsu projection of her has no chakra, and the wire tying her to the tree is as strong as Kakashi needs it to be. Maybe he shouldn’t piss her off if he wants her to listen, though.

“Here,” he sighs and sits down against the memorial stone, and Tsunade flickers standing to sitting, the ninja wire still keeping her tied to the tree.

“I’m loyal to Konoha-”

“Like hell.”

“-and I need your help.”

“You son of a-” Tsunade’s voice cuts off as a piece of tape appears over her mouth. Kakashi cringes.

“I’m sorry, I- I need you to listen. I don’t have much time before I run out of chakra.”

He shrinks on himself a little bit and hesitates before pulling down his mask. Tsunade’s eyes widen. “I can’t say much,” he says, then sticks out his tongue to explain. He gestures to the handprints he burned onto himself. “I used to have another seal here, too. It made me black out and did something to my nerves so I couldn’t move. I had to burn it off so they couldn’t get me.” He stares, focused, into Tsunade’s wide eyes, silently begging her to understand. “This was put on me the night the Sandaime was assassinated.” Tsunade doesn’t break his gaze, but she does raise an eyebrow in puzzlement.

Kakashi pulls up his mask with a sigh. How could he explain? Maybe- could he summon Pakkun into a genjutsu? He tries, but it doesn’t work. He doesn’t know if he'll have enough time to recreate the scroll he’s been using to explain. He tries to think it into existence in the genjutsu, but the seal chokes him and he makes a strangled cough.  
Tsunade looks confused.

He pulls his mask down again to show her how the seal snakes its way down his throat when he tries to say anything.

“I di-” he starts, then gags as the seal chokes him.

“Danz-”

“He-”

Tsunade now looks intrigued enough to listen, so he lets the tape disappear.

“Danzou’s the hokage now,” he explains, pulling the mask up again. “He’s going to ruin the village; we can’t let him.”

Something in that sets Tsunade off; she looks murderous, he fists clenched and her muscled arms straining against the wire holding her to the tree. “You shouldn’t have killed the Sandaime then, Kakashi.”

“I di-” he protests automatically, but the seal hits him more forcefully than it has been and he has to pull his mask down again to dry heave around gulps of air. He covers his face again, then gestures to it tiredly. “The seal again.”

After a few more seconds to catch his breath, he starts again. “I’m going to take him down—Danzou—but we need someone good to take his place. I’ll explain more when... “

His voice trails off as a thought drags its feet through his brain. He tries to examine it, but his vision blurs and he’s back on the ground for a moment, water in his lungs, before his chakra runs out and his vision goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that Tsunade's appeared, we can finally get to the good stuff.
> 
> What did you think of the Kakashi vs. Tsunade fight?
> 
> I wasn't planning on updating for like another week but y'all's comments have got me very motivated to write <3 It's shorter and less happens, but that's where I needed to end the chapter so oh well.
> 
> Let me know what you think!


	8. Kakashi Feels a Little Bit Dead Inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But Really, What's New?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots more canon fudging coming up! But y'all should be used to that by now. 
> 
> No editing or even reading through the chapter before posting, we die like Kakashi's will to live.

Kakashi doesn’t realize it until he wakes up restrained, but he’s expecting to wake up in a hospital. 

“Senpai,” Tenzou would say, disapprovingly.

“Kakashi!” Gai would wail, theatrically. 

“Kakashi,” the Sandaime would sigh, sadly.

“Could someone bring me a book, please?” Kakashi would ask, pleasantly.

He must really be pathetic, if he’s longing to wake up in a hospital and get scolded. But, considering the situation, it’s understandable— just this once. He’s sitting tied to a tree, Obito’s Sharingan covered. That’s probably fair, he supposes, considering he’d used the Sharingan on Tsunade then tied _her_ to a tree.

Tsunade. 

Oh, no. 

Kakashi’s pulse thrums against the ninja wire as he realizes the situation he’s in. 

He has to talk himself into calming down. It’s okay; if Tsunade were going to kill him, she would have done it when he passed out. She wouldn’t have bothered carrying him away and binding him to a tree with ninja wire if she’d already decided she was going to kill him. But the fact that he’s bound means that she hasn’t exactly decided _not_ to kill him, either. He can barely move anyway for the chakra exhaustion, so if he doesn’t convince her, he’s dead.

He can’t count on Itachi for a rescue—they decided that in every town Kakashi entered to announce his presence, Itachi and Tobi would wait and not make any contact; it wouldn’t do Kakashi any favors for Tsunade to see him with Uchiha Itachi. He’d only show up if he needed to collect a body—Kakashi’s—to destroy the Sharingan.

He definitely can’t count on Tobi for a rescue. Even if he could, Kakashi would prefer to stay tied to his tree, thank you very much.

Deliberate footsteps from behind the tree alert him to Tsunade’s presence, but the chakra exhaustion won’t even allow him to turn his head and look. When she comes into view, he tracks her with his eye.

“Kakashi,” Tsunade says, threateningly.

Instinctively, he gives a small bow with his head. He forgets about the chakra exhaustion, and instead of a bow, he only gets enough momentum to push his head away from the trunk of the tree but not enough to hold it up and it sways down to hang forward. “Tsunade-hime,” he says to the ground. With a hand to his forehead, Tsunade huffs, rolls her eyes, pushes his head back up.

“You have some explaining to do, brat. I suggest you get on it.”

“I…” Kakashi sighs and deflates. If he were able to move, he’d drag a hand down his face.

“Well?” Tsunade taps her foot and crosses her arms. “Spit it out!”

“It’s like I said, that seal. I can’t say much. I figured out how to write it out. I have it on a scroll somewhere if you can find it. All of my stuff is sealed into a scroll. It’s in the pocket of my-” Kakashi realizes he’s not wearing the Akatsuki cloak. By straining his eyes down, he sees he’s wearing his plain black shirt and pants. “It’s in the pocket of my cloak if you want to take a look.”

Tsunade is remarkably casual. Instead of burning away his cloak or activating the scroll from a distance, she picks it up from the ground and digs through it to find the pocket. She glances at him as she activates the scroll and a large pile of kunai poofs out. Kakashi hopes his new katana made it out of that fight okay.

“It’s in there?” Tsunade asks, gesturing toward the kunai with her head.

“Mm hmm.”

She stomps and sends the pile flying with her chakra, scattering the kunai along with a few scrolls and his empty, jerky-scented pouch, which makes his stomach growl. Tsunade sifts through the scrolls until Kakashi says, “That one,” and she unrolls it.

Part of Kakashi registers the danger of anger blooming on her face as she reads, but the other part is nostalgic, thinking about how Jiraiya would be backing up, waving his hands and chuckling nervously.

“Explain,” she demands.

“I _can’t._ ”

“I don’t care. Try.”

“I physically cannot.”

“Try. Anyway.”

He tries, and this time when the seal stops him, it steals the air from his lungs until he can’t even choke, can only sit there praying for air until his vision goes black. 

It returns grainy and dark a moment later and he sees Tsunade crouching next to him, one glowing hand on his chest and the other on his head. Her touch is steady and gentle.

“That’s a nasty seal,” she says. “It’s connected to your brain. It messes with nerves and signals, not your actual lungs or windpipe.”

“I figured as much,” he sighs. He realizes his mask is down, but before he can say anything, Tsunade reaches to pull it up for him. 

“I’m not going to apologize,” she says in her voice of stone. “You weren’t breathing, so of course I removed your stupid mask.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she says, slicing through the ninja wire with a kunai, “Luckily for you, I’ve decided to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

Without the wire to hold him up, Kakashi starts to slide to the left.

Tsunade props him up unceremoniously by wedging him between a pack of supplies and the tree.

“Thank you, Tsunade-hime.”

“Don’t let it go to your head, brat.” She tugs a big log over to her with one hand and plops herself onto it. “I have a few questions for you.”

“Well. It’s not like I’ll be doing anything else right now, so, ask away.”

“First of all, how stupid even _are_ you, coming to seek me out?”

“Less stupid and more desperate,” Kakashi points out.

Tsunade sighs and puts her face in her hands. Kakashi’s been dealing with his own fair share of problems, lately, but his heart aches for Tsunade. All she wanted was to get away, and she had. Unlike Kakashi, she’d taken decisive action. He’s not sure when he started feeling this numbing bitterness in his chest, but he feels like he’s given his all to Konoha and there’s barely anything left of him. Maybe it’s his distance from the village, but every thought and every conversation clatters in his emptiness, making him realize that there should be something there. For all her unsavory tendencies, Tsunade has it all figured out, and Kakashi feels like the worst kind of cruel, crashing into her life and taking it from her.

Her face still in her hands, she starts talking. 

“You know, I hate it, but I really do think I trust you. You easily could have killed me in that village, eh? I was very, very drunk, and very, very, unprepared. If you’d come at me before I drew the alcohol out of my blood, you would have won that fight. And that seal…” Tsunade looks up, her face red from where she’s been rubbing at it with her hands. “That’s really… It’s really twisted of Danzou, but somehow, I’m not surprised.”

She sighs again. “You know, I _left_ the village in the first place because I was so damn sick of the people I loved getting killed!” She clenches her fists, then unfurls her fingers, like she’s commanding herself to relax. She laughs, sniffs wetly, and swipes her sleeve under her nose. “I should have known it wouldn’t do anything.” Suddenly, she stands up, spins around, and kicks the log she was sitting on so hard that it disappears into the sky. When she turns back to Kakashi, her eyes are red but determined. “I’m going to kill Danzou.” Then, “I’m in.”

Kakashi meets her gaze, unwavering. He nods solemnly.

Oh—he can’t bring his head back up. It flops down.

Tsunade barks out a laugh followed by another sniff. “Wow, you’re a mess, Kakashi,” she says as she pushes his head back up. “And that’s coming from _me._ ” She crouches by him and her hands start to glow. “I’m going to give you a small chakra injection. I’m also going to take a look at your face and whatever the hell is going on with your leg.”

Maybe Kakashi’s not bitter and empty after all, because he can feel warmth in his chest and a smile on his burned face. Maybe it means something that he’s been feeling that a lot more since leaving Konoha.

Maybe not. 

He thinks of Gai and Tenzou. He didn’t feel this _love_ or _happiness_ or whatever it is with them, but it wasn’t their fault. There was no room for it, with ANBU hoarding all the pieces of him for its own personal use. There was nothing left for the few people who bothered to care about him; he couldn’t care back then. Now this, he’s familiar with. The guilt.

Tsunade breaks into his thoughts with, “I’m going to break your leg, and it’s going to hurt. Whatever you did, and whatever ape you got to set it for you, it’s really screwed up so I-” Kakashi cries out as Tsunade unexpectedly breaks his leg in the middle of her sentence. As she moves the bone around, he’s more prepared and bites his lip against the pain. He distantly hears her continuing. “...to do this before the chakra injection so you didn’t squirm and scatter these around.” He sees lumps moving on his leg as her glowing hands guide the pieces of shattered bone to their proper places. That’s nice, he thinks with horrified fascination.

As soon as Tsunade finishes his leg and the chakra injection, Kakashi stands up and rolls his shoulders. He’s stretching when Tsunade says, “Mask down.” He hesitates. He’s shown his seal and his burn to every ninja and then some, he feels like, even had it healed by the medic in Rain, and Tsunade _just_ pulled his mask down to help him breathe, but this is different, somehow. maybe because Tsunade was just so vulnerable with him that he’s let his own guard down—There’s vulnerability seeping from _somewhere_ on him. Probably Obito’s eye.

Tsunade catches his hesitation and rolls her eyes. “Get over yourself, or I’ll do it for you. If that burn is infected, it could reach your eye and then you’d be even _more_ useless in a fight.”

He tugs the mask down; he’d rather do it himself. 

Tsunade places her palm over one of the handprints Kakashi left, and suddenly, all he can think of is Konoha’s Torture and Interrogation department, how he was restrained, panicked, and unable to move, as a ninja of his own village runs his hands over Kakashi’s face because they _knew_ he never took off his mask. Konoha turned on him so quickly, took their knowledge of him—the knowledge he’d given, _freely,_ out of loyalty to the village—and used it against him. They’d even waltzed right into his mind, uncaring, uninvited. Made him live his worst failures, analyzed them to use against him. Konoha, they-

“What the hell, Kakashi?” Tsunade asks, now several feet away from him. He blinks once, bringing his attention back to the present. He’s empty again, and Tsunade’s words rattle in him for a moment before they register, but she’s already continuing. “They’re not infected, but the scars are there to stay.”

“Thank you, Tsunade-hime,” he says with a nod, then turns to reach for his cloak.

“Answer me, though. I _said_ what _was_ that?” She’s now beside him, leaning toward him with her hands on her hips and narrowed eyes.

“Oh. I don’t… I’m not sure,” Kakashi answers honestly.

“Okay…” she says, but he can see her watching him as he grabs his cloak.

He shoves thoughts of Konoha to the back of his brain. _I’ll deal with you later,_ he promises. Compartmentalize, like he always does. New topic, new topic- “I think I should let you know, I’m traveling with some missing-nin.”

Tsunade is still giving him that look, her eyes narrowed, but then it softens, and she laughs. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but you’re also a missing-nin. You’ve got the scratched headband and everything.”

“It’s a fashion statement.”

“Really? I thought you were trying to convince me you were loyal to Konoha?”

Kakashi, untying the headband, smiles, sort of. He can’t bring himself to give a real smile right now, so he just squints his eye and lifts his cheek. Not like anyone can tell, with the mask. “Yeah, I was actually just wearing this to make myself more recognizable. I was trying to lure you out.”

Tsunade snorts, throwing her head back. “Well, it worked. Cheeky brat.”

“The headband’s not even mine.”

“Oh? And where did you get a Konoha headband all the way out here?”

“It’s- ah, that is… it’s Itachi’s,” he says, keeping up his eye-smile and scratching the back of his head, wincing.

“Itachi?”

“Well, you read the scroll, didn’t you? It’s, ah, a bit of a long story. He can tell you when we get back.”

“Dammit, Kakashi! I thought you were smarter than that!”

“You called me stupid not even an hour ago,” he points out.

“Yes, but I didn’t think you were _this_ stupid!”

Kakashi sighs. “I think you’ll get along nicely with Tobi,” he says. “He’s the other dangerous missing-nin I’m traveling with.”

“Oh, good. Great. The _other_ dangerous missing-nin.”

“Oops, did I forget to tell you that I joined a missing-nin organization?”

“You _what?_ ” Tsunade takes a step toward him, and the step sends cracks into the tree he was just tied to.

“We want you to be Hokage, but you’re not Hokage _yet_ , so I don’t have to listen to you.”

“I need a drink,” Tsunade grumbles. “I’ll come with you, but I left my stuff in town and I also really need to not be sober right now, so we’re going back. Follow me.”

Kakashi’s still tired and hungry, but he’s fascinated by how good his leg feels. He steps on it gingerly at first, then with his usual stride. He can tell he’s a bit off—not his leg, but now he’s used to compensating, walking slightly crooked. Tsunade walks in purposeful, powerful strides next to him.

“How’s Ichiraku and his daughter?” she asks.

“Good.”

“The Hyuuga clan?”

“Mm, the usual.”

“A shitstorm, then.”

“Yes.”

Tsunade continues asking about people in the village, and Kakashi answers easily until she gets to, “Minato and Kushina’s kid?”

“He’s- I’m worried. Danzou-”

“You think Danzou wants something from him?”

“Danzou wants all the power he can get, and a jinchuuriki would definitely qualify.”

“Shit.”

They follow the path the rest of the way to the village without talking, but Tsunade keeps looking at Kakashi like she expects him to say something. Kakashi doesn’t have anything to say, so he just sticks his hands in the pockets of his cloak and appreciates the feeling of being able to put weight on his leg. They stroll into the village, and the people cower out of their way, scattering into buildings so the streets are empty. Maybe Kakashi should have covered himself up with a henge. 

Tsunade grabs her stuff from the inn she’d been staying at, and they stroll right on out again. Kakashi keeps an eye out for the brave girl who’d stood up to him, but there’s no one in sight. He sighs, not knowing what he would’ve done, anyway, if he’d seen her. Talk to her? Right. Like _that_ would have accomplished anything. 

Soon, their strolling turns to trudging, and it’s a relief when Kakashi finds Itachi and Tobi at their meet-up spot outside of a small town. He didn’t think there’d ever be a day when he felt anything other than annoyance at seeing Tobi, but there’s a first time for everything.

“Yo,” he says, raising a hand. Itachi greets Tsunade with a low bow, and Tobi, surprisingly, does the same; Tsunade responds with a growl.

“Kakashi said you would explain things to me. Do it before I splatter your guts on the ground.”

As Itachi, unruffled, explains everything in an even, measured voice, Kakashi focuses his attention on Tsunade, who goes from glaring to crossing her arms to pacing and drinking straight from a bottle that she’d apparently grabbed in the village.

Itachi looks to Kakashi for help when Tsunade ends up sitting on the ground, leaning back on an elbow and swinging the bottle around in her other hand.

“Tsunade-hime,” he says, crouching down beside her. “Could you please filter the alcohol out of your blood again? You’re not making a good impression on Itachi-kun here; he’s only fifteen. That’s a very sensitive age for young missing-nin.”

“Hah!” she shouts, jabbing a finger at him. “No.”

“This is important,” Kakashi insists, trying to imitate Minato-sensei’s you-should-feel-guilty tone. Tobi snickers behind him, so he can only assume he sounds ridiculous, but he continues. “We’re trying to talk about village safety. Please be sober.”

“No! There’s a reason I’m drunk and it’s because I don’t want to be sober! So lea’me alone, you and Jiraiya. Gods,” she whines, waving the bottle.

Reluctantly, Kakashi scoots toward her, only to be rewarded with a punch to the side that sends him crashing into the side of a hill. He wheezes as he gets up, but he can move and breathe relatively easily, so at least he hasn’t re-broken his ribs.

When he makes his way back to Itachi, he whispers, “Let’s just…let her handle things on her own, for now.” He turns to enter the village, but thinks better of it. “Itachi, could you spare some chakra to give me a henge? I’m pretty useless right now.”

“Don’t worry!” chimes Tobi as he makes the seals for a henge. “I’ve got you covered!”

All of a sudden, Kakashi’s in a green jumpsuit and orange leg warmers. “Thanks Tobi,” he answers genially. “Knew I could count on you.” He squints a fake smile at him with his single eye.

“What are you doing with your face?” Tobi shrieks. Did he not get sick of his own voice? Apparently not, because he continues. “Is something wrong with your eye? Are you going blind? Then you’ll really only have one eye! It’s the other one that’s the issue, though, hm, can I gouge it out for you?”

Kakashi is utterly confused until he realizes that his henge wouldn’t have a mask. To himself, he blames his confusion on the chakra exhaustion, easier and less embarrassing that way. To Tobi, he says, “Oh, I’m just practicing.”

“For what?”

Kakashi just winks at him, taking advantage of having two visible eyes. “You’ll see.”

“What! Tell me!”

“You’ll see. Be patient, Tobi.”

Tobi trots next to him as he walks into town, whining. Kakashi bears it with clenched teeth.

“Kakashi,” Itachi interrupts from his other side. “Are we just going to leave Tsunade out there?”  
This time when Kakashi smiles, he makes sure to use his whole face. “Yes. It’ll be good for her.”

Tobi lets out his annoying, high pitched laugh. “Yeah! Like it was good for Obito when you left _him!_ Right, Bakashi?”

“Thank you for your commentary, Tobi,” he says pleasantly.

In truth, hearing “Obito” and “Bakashi” from Tobi in such quick succession stays plastered in his ears long after they check into an inn and Itachi and Tobi fall asleep. He wishes he had the anger to want to kill Tobi, but instead, it just rustles in his empty heart like Konoha’s leaves before winter. It’s still there after sleeping a few hours, only muffled, like the fallen leaves before spring, limp and weak from melting snow.

In the morning, they leave to check on Tsunade. Maybe it actually _was_ good for her; she looks alert and cheerful. The Konoha ninja unconscious at her feet looks decidedly less so.

“Look what I found!” she announced. “He came and tried to approach me about Kakashi, said he’d watched him kill the Sandaime and wanted my help to bring him in. Now, we’ll be nice to him,” she says as she secures ninja wire around his ankles, “he _is_ Konoha, after all. But who’s saying we can’t get a little information out of him first, eh?”

It’s the first Konoha ninja on his trail, but Kakashi feels decidedly better about that with Itachi and Tsunade on his side. Tobi’s presence might cancel that out, but overall, he’s in a lot better position than he was when he left Konoha.

He feels more unease, though, the closer he gets to Tsunade and the unconscious ninja. Every step brings his features into better focus, and Kakashi can’t help but want to smash his own head against a wall, just a little.

Tsunade’s captured Tenzou.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun dun!
> 
> Like I said in the note up top, lots of canon fudging is on its way. Especially regarding Tenzou. Just about everything about him will be contrary to canon.
> 
> This one took me a bit; it's because school hit me in the face like a soccer ball made of cement. It'll probably get worse from here on out but I'm hoping to develop some time management skills lol so hopefully the next chapter won't wait so long. 
> 
> As always, your comments motivate me so so much. Like, so much. tysm <3
> 
> NEXT TIME ON RENEGADE: Wait, Tenzou really saw Kakashi kill the Hokage?


	9. Finally, a Break from Tobi.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Itachi considers a new career as a personal chef.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'm sorry. In the little blurb at the end of the last chapter, I implied that Tenzou really saw Kakashi kill the Hokage. I was planning on revealing that Kakashi actually DID kill him, but then I decided that it didn't fit with the character development I wanted. I kind of want him to grow disillusioned with the village over time, not start out 100% that way. So forget I ever said that lol.

“Hey, Tsunade-hime?” Kakashi says. “I know this guy. He might actually...if anyone’s on my side, it’ll be him. But we should still play it safe. Why don’t you talk to him alone, see what he tells you, _then_ I’ll talk to him.”

“Okay,” Tsunade says, hoisting Tenzou over her shoulder. “Take your missing-nin pals with you, I’ll be over there,” she says, jerking her head toward a tree by a wooden fence.

“Maybe it’s best to go somewhere else?” he suggests. “Somewhere, ah,” he pauses. He trusts that Itachi has Konoha’s best interests at heart, and Itachi worked with them in ANBU, so maybe he already knows, but Tobi has already confessed to wanting to assassinate a Hokage. Not Danzou, specifically, just anyone who happens to be Konoha’s leader. It’d be best to keep Tenzou’s secret. He whispers it in Tsunade’s ear. Her eyes widen and she looks sharply from Kakashi to Tenzou. 

“Okay,” is her only verbal response.

Tenzou can create his own trees from nothing, so keeping him away from wood probably wouldn’t change all that much, but at least he can warn Tsunade away from tying him to a tree in what seems to be the popular trend. Tenzou easily shapes trees to his will.

Kakashi takes Itachi and Tobi to a spot on the village wall where they won’t be spotted but they can still see Tsunade.

“Who’s that?” Tobi asks in a whisper-shout that probably reached all the way back to Konoha, making Kakashi curl his toes in a cringe of irritation. He’s still trying to force himself back to unaffected nonchalance when Itachi answers.

“He’s from Konoha. Kakashi and I are both acquainted with him.”

So Itachi does know who was behind that ceramic mask.

“I always liked him,” Itachi continues with a smile. “It’s too bad I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye before Tsunade kills him.”

Kakashi snaps his head to look at Itachi—there’s a crinkle to his eye that has Kakashi staring until he remembers to smile back. “Itachi, did I just hear you make a joke? Aw, my little kohai, you’re learning!” He creates a drop of water on his finger with a couple hand seals, then drags it down his face like a tear. “They grow up so fast! Unless, of course, you weren’t joking. He’ll survive Tsunade,” he reassures. “But after that, it’s my turn, and I don’t know if you’ve heard those rumors about the dangerous Sharingan Kakashi who calls himself that because he has a Sharingan and his name is Kakashi?”

“No, tell me.”

“Well, he’s got a Sharingan and his name is Kakashi. So we’ll see if poor Tenzou survives that.”

“I doubt it!” Tobi chimes. “ _I’ve_ heard that not many of Sharingan Kakashi’s friends survive him!” Kakashi can already feel his eye threatening to twitch. “Hmm, let’s see. One killed himself,” he says, counting one by one on his gloved fingers, “another crushed by a boulder and left to die, another with a chidori through the-”

“ _Tobi,_ ” Itachi says, smile gone and his eyes eerily blank despite the spin of the Sharingan. “That’s enough.”

“Aw, senpai, you’re no fun,” Tobi pouts, then disappears in a swirl. 

Kakashi sighs and rubs at his face with both hands. “I can feel the wrinkles already, Itachi. Look at me; he’s turning me into an old man. My hair’s gone gray.”

“Ah. Yes, it has.”

Kakashi loosens from where he’s crouching on the wall to sit and stretch out his long legs, then rests an elbow on his knee and uses his hand to prop up his chin. “What a lovely team reunion we’re having. We even have an urgent assassination mission and everything. Just like old times.”

“Two of us are missing-nin and the other was sent to hunt them,” Itachi points out.

“That’s not so out of the ordinary; we always were a strange team. A fifteen-year-old leading a group of grown men plus two eleven-year-olds on S-ranked missions.”

Itachi moves out of his crouch as well to sit with his legs over the side of the wall. “Looking back on the ANBU makes me appreciate the Akatsuki.”

“Mm.” The ANBU isn’t such a distant memory for Kakashi. He’s not been out of the village for long.

In Konoha, he relied on ANBU missions like chakra in the soles of his feet to keep him above water. Every time he stopped for a second, took a break, he’d slip below and start to drown. Now, he’s gone a month with no ANBU, and he has yet to snap the way he would have in Konoha.

“I won’t be able to return to the village like you will after we take down Danzou; I’ve killed too many,” says Itachi. Kakashi doesn’t bother to protest; he knows it’s true—but he’s a little surprised at the idea: returning to the village. He hasn’t really considered it, actually.

Itachi turns his head to look Kakashi in the eyes. There’s something in the swirl of his Sharingan that makes Kakashi open his. Obito’s Sharingan always spins fast, desperately sucking in chakra; Itachi’s have a slow, floating swirl that intensifies as he does. Right now, they’re spinning in tight, steady circles. “Kakashi. Promise me you won’t let them put my brother in ANBU.”

Kakashi tries not to do promises; they never turn out well.

“Okay,” he replies, and thinks that he may as well go recruit the little Uchiha to ANBU himself, with his track record.

Itachi nods solemnly and they both turn back to watch Tsunade with Tenzou, a newly-settled heaviness to the air. They sit in silence until Tsunade starts walking away from Tenzou, toward their spot on the wall, then they flicker down to meet her. She jerks her head to the side to indicate a covered spot they can stand.

“I can’t get a read on him,” she says with her hands on her hips. “I played the part of what he already thought I was, told him I’ve just been out here minding my own business, but decided to take action when I heard about the Sandaime’s assassination, and now I’m also on the lookout for the disgusting little runt who killed him.”

Kakashi gives a deadpan “Ouch, my heart,” and Tsunade laughs loudly and gives him a fond punch that sends him skidding backward in the wet grass and leaving twin divots where his heels tore it up.

“He just asked if I’d heard anything else, and said that he’s one of the new Godaime’s most trusted operatives, showed me a seal like yours to prove it, says it’s a mark of loyalty. You sure we can trust him, Kakashi?” she asks with an eyebrow raised skeptically.

“I-” he interrupts himself with a sigh. “Probably. But we’ll have to fill him in on everything. You mind if he knows you’re with us?”

“No. If he’s one of Danzou’s, I’d prefer it. Let him know we’re coming, three of the strongest ninja the village knows. Let him worry, lose sleep.”

Tsunade’s way of doing things is not at all how Kakashi usually operates, but he can admire her boldness, and it does make things easier with Tenzou: no need to fake some sort of fight between him and Tsunade and whisk Tenzou away.

He leaves with a nod. There’s a little something nagging in his gut as he makes his way toward Tenzou—what if he really is loyal to Danzou? What if he hates Kakashi for killing the Sandaime and abandoning everything he’d taught him? What if—what if, nothing. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t let doubts stop him from doing what he needs to, never has.

He shoves his hands in his pockets and ambles over to Tenzou.

His eyes widen, almost bulging out of his head. “Senp-”

“Maa, Tenzou,” Kakashi says as he lowers himself to the ground to sit cross-legged in front of him. He smiles. “How’ve you been?”

“You- you- they-”

“Come to capture the infamous assassin of the Sandaime?”

“I-”

“Or, are you here to turn missing-nin yourself? Ah, wouldn’t that be poetic; the only wood-style user since the village’s founder, a traitor. Don’t you think?” Kakashi decides to stop tormenting Tenzou and give him a chance to talk, but not without another smile. It was so familiar, teasing him. There was another little tug of apprehension, but Kakashi ignored it. If Tenzou really is loyal to Danzou, there’s nothing Kakashi can really do about it, just accept it and piece himself back together afterward.

“I- I- Kakashi-senpai! Let me talk!”

Kakashi raises his eyebrows and nods in a gesture that says _yeah, I am, just waiting on you_.

Tenzou rolls his eyes in exasperation, then sighs. “Danzou sent me to bring you in. He thinks you’re a danger to him. But!” he interjects, apparently seeing some change in Kakashi’s expression or posture. Kakashi realizes his slouch has tightened into a hunching of his shoulders. He loosens them again. “But, he didn’t know that I still consider you my friend.”

With that, keeping up his slouch is a lost cause. Kakashi’s head snaps up from where he’s been looking at the ground, looking at Tenzou with wonder. Tenzou looks back at him with serious and focused eyes. “You were the one that taught me what loyalty is. I don’t think you’d kill the Hokage.” While his words are a statement, his eyes ask the question.

Tenzou knows the seal. He’ll know exactly what’s going on when it activates, so Kakashi points at his face and tries to deny it to show Tenzou what’s going on.

“I di-” 

He feels like he’s dying with a sharp rock lodged in his throat. He tries to wheeze past it, but he can’t get in any air. His vision narrows, going black at the edges, and he opens the Sharingan to try to snap himself out of the spiral, but all it does is make him aware of Tenzou’s panic as he blacks out.

He wakes up to Tsunade cradling his head in her lap between her hands, looking down into his eye. “Kakashi?” she asks.

“Yo,” he tries, but it comes out as “eugh.” His tongue has decided to go floppy and useless in his mouth.

Behind Tsunade, Tenzou and Itachi are hovering. There’s a small path of dried blood leading down from Tenzou’s metal faceplate, and the side of Itachi’s face is swollen and bumpy.

Great. They’ve been fighting. He doesn’t want to deal with that, so he closes his eye again.

“Kakashi!” Tsunade scolds him, grabbing his ear and twisting.

“Ow.”

“Don’t go playing dead on me after you just _fainted_ out of nowhere.”

“Oh,” he says, cracking his eye open just a little. “Okay,” he says, then closes it again. 

He can hear Tsunade forcibly restraining herself from punching him, and smiles.

“Kakashi! Stop being a brat!”

With a heavy sigh, he opens his eye and sits up. Tsunade yells at him to lie back down. He does, gladly.

“The seal,” he says tiredly. “It’s been getting worse.”

Tenzou looks so stricken Kakashi worries he might keel over, and he’s not in a great position to catch him right now if he does.

He says, “Oi, Tenzou, I thought you were tied up?” It serves to get both Itachi and Tsunade looking at Tenzou. Kakashi thinks that it might be a long shot, but he hopes that at least one of them would stop his fall.

“I was worried about you! I couldn’t very well stay tied up when you started _convulsing_ in front of me!

“He escaped,” Itachi says, not surprised in the least. “Tsunade thought he attacked you.”

Tenzou steps forward. “I w-”

“And you were collapsed on the ground,” Itachi continues, not acknowledging the interruption. “Like he said, convulsing. So it was only natural.” He steps closer and crouches down next to Tsunade. “I had to keep them from killing each other.”

Both Tsunade and Tenzou break out yelling in protest.

“Don’t say that like we’re some bratty genin-”

“I wasn’t attacking him! I-”

“Can you really blame me? He-”

“Well _Itachi_ -”

“-it look like!”

Kakashi takes advantage of Tsunade’s distraction to stand up. Itachi gives him a look of disapproval, but doesn’t say anything. They then share a look of longsuffering as Tsunade stands up to stagger toward Tenzou and jab a finger at him—shouldn’t Tsunade be the mature one out of all of them?

Itachi lightly feels at the bruise on his face and Kakashi picks dirt and grass off of himself as they wait for the argument to stop, but it doesn’t. Kakashi supposes he feels responsible for it all as Itachi and Tenzou’s former captain; he sighs and puts a hand on Tenzou and Tsunade’s shoulders. 

“Now, now, children. Settle down. We have bigger problems to solve.” Tenzou has the decency to hang his head a little, but Tsunade turns on Kakashi instead.

“You! What was that! Why didn’t you tell anyone your seal was doing… that.”

“It wasn’t, until recently. I guess, maybe I should be more careful to avoid activating it.” And, before anyone can say anything else on the topic, he says, “So. Tenzou. You with us?”

“Um. In what sense, exactly?” Kakashi likes watching him fidget. He’s changed a lot since they first met, and the fact that he shows any reaction at all is good. It makes Kakashi happy, seeing Tenzou acting like the person he is instead of whatever Danzou was trying to turn him into, so he pokes fun at him sometimes, just to see it.

“Oh,” he says, and even though he’s not joking, he says it casually to get a rise out of Tenzou— “we’re going to assassinate the Hokage.”

“Are you ki- you’re not kidding.”

“No,” confirms Itachi.

Tsunade crosses her arms and narrows her eyes. “Are you in?”

“I– Yes. Of course. Anything. For Konoha.” 

All four of them nod solemnly.

“I’ve got the same problem as Kakashi, though,” he says and shows them his tongue. 

Tsunade curses.

“And I’m supposed to report back to Danzou in a week.”

Tsunade curses again.

“Hey, wait. It’s okay. He can be our man on the inside. Right, Tenzou?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve got some planning to do, then, before you have to head back.”

Just like that, they’ve both forgotten about Kakashi’s seal problem and their disagreement, embroiled instead in plotting. Kakashi’s not so sure about Itachi, though; he can feel the swirl of the Sharingan boring into his skull. Perceptive, that Itachi.

After thirty minutes, their ideas are this:

Poison Danzou (Tsunade).

Not poison Danzou (Tenzou).

Wow, that’s a good plan, why don’t we just _make friends_ with him (Tsunade).

Good idea, Tsunade-hime. Itachi’s already volunteered to seduce him (Kakashi).

Why don’t we try putting all of them together? Tsunade can poison him, Tenzou can not-poison him, and Kakashi can seduce him (Itachi).

Good, Itachi. I like that. Since you’re the only one without a role, you can be our personal chef (Kakashi).

I thought we agreed that _Tsunade_ was the poisoner? (Itachi.)

New plan: poison Itachi and Kakashi so we can get some actual work done (Tsunade).

“Maa, don’t you think that’s a little harsh? You don’t think I could seduce Danzou?”

They’re sitting on wooden benches that Tenzou grew, and Kakashi is writing down their ideas with one of his scrolls and brushes on a small wooden table. He doesn’t like the look of their plans so far.

“Kakashi, of _course_ I think you’d be able to seduce Danzou!” she says, waving her hands exasperatedly. “He’ll be helpless as soon as he gets a glimpse of that face—wait, what face? The one you keep hidden at all times? I mean, of course I have complete confidence in you to seduce the Hokage with the provocative power of your single exposed eyelid! No!” she says, getting to her feet and stomping over. “You idiot! Can we _focus?_ In case you’ve forgotten, we’re trying to assassinate the most powerful man in Konoha!”

As if he _could_ forget. He levels her with a calm, serious stare. “I haven’t.”

She must believe him, because she sucks in a breath and looks away with strained eyes. “Right. I need a drink.” She’s already opening a sealed scroll, and from it she pulls a bottle and three small glasses. “Who’ll join me? Ugh, wait, nevermind. How old are you all anyway?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fourteen.”

“I’m an old man at heart.”

Tsunade drinks, and Kakashi turns back to Tenzou and Itachi with a sigh.

“There are only four of us. Plus Tobi, I guess. We’ll do a precision strike instead of a straight-on attack. Tenzou, how’s the village looking? Anyone that will help us?”

“Um… yeah. Danzou has me spying on possible traitors. They’re too smart to let anything slip, but I know who he suspects. Nara Shikaku is the main one, but he’s also got me watching Sarutobi Asuma and Uchiha Sasuke.”

Itachi sucks in a quick breath; Kakashi supposes it’s his version of a gasp. “Sasuke?”

There’s no way Danzou is suspicious of Sasuke. How old is he? Like, seven? Is he even in the academy yet? Kakashi tries to puzzle out Itachi’s expression—his eyes are wide but unfocused, his lips pressed together.

When Kakashi realizes, his own eyes widen. Danzou doesn’t suspect him; he’s after Sasuke’s _eyes_. He’s waiting for the Sharingan to activate, then he’ll go in and, what? Kidnap him? Claw the eyes out of his face?

He glances at Tenzou—what does he think of Danzou’s interest in Sasuke? Poor Tenzou just looks uncomfortable. He doesn’t _want_ to be spying on a child, but he has no choice, unless he goes missing-nin like Kakashi. In the village, Danzou practically owns him.

“Who’s Sasuke?” Tsunade says as she swaggers over, throwing an arm around Tenzou.

Itachi is giving a tense answer, but Kakashi is determined to keep dwelling on his sympathy for Tenzou. Danzou practically owns him. He’s got the seal on his tongue, and he has nowhere else to go. All he’s known his entire life is being used by Danzou. Or, well. Before that, Orochimaru and his experiments.

At that thought, dread runs down the back of his throat to condense into a stone in his stomach, so he decides to examine it further—that’s not just sympathy or horror, it’s apprehension. Orochimaru is on Danzou’s side, Orochimaru runs human experiments.

Oh—Sasuke. Oh. Orochimaru is Danzou’s Sharingan transplanter, and as soon as Sasuke’s activate, that’s where he’ll end up. Oh. He doesn’t tell Itachi. He doesn’t need to know, and they’ll save him before that happens anyway.

“Excuse me, Tsunade-hime,” Kakashi says, cutting off her drunken loudness. “Sasuke will be our top priority. Obviously, we are going to kill Danzou, but if we can’t manage that, we still need to get Sasuke out.” He wouldn’t abandon someone, especially someone so important to Itachi—maybe the _only_ person important to Itachi.

“Here’s what I’m thinking. We can have Tsunade make a triumphant return to–oh, nevermind, that won’t work, it will probably make Danzou feel thre–wait. Maybe that’s a good thing. Okay. Okay. Tsunade will make a triumphant return to the village. She drums up support with Shikaku and Asuma, and they drum up support with their clans.”

Itachi and Tenzou nod, and Tsunade hollers. 

“Then, Tsunade leads them in an overthrow of Danzou’s supporters as a distraction, while Itachi and I take out Danzou. Tenzou, you’ll be with Sasuke. If Danzou tries to flee, he’ll try to take Sasuke with him.” Kakashi looks at Itachi as he explains, “We’ll need our Sharingan to fight Danzou.”

He directs his next explanation toward Tsunade. “Tsunade-hime,” he says, and at his words, she lifts her head up from where she’d been resting it on her hands. “You’ll tell everyone the–” He means to say, _you’ll tell everyone the truth about the Sandaime’s death_ , carefully avoiding any interference from the seal, but he starts choking around it anyway as it cinches around his airway.

“Kakashi,” she says, all deadly serious and her eyes narrowed with determination. “I won’t do any of that until we get your damn seal taken care of! What if you show up to fight Danzou, and he has a way to activate the seal and kills you on the spot, hah? What if you accidentally go against it and it gets so bad it kills you before we even get to Konoha? No. I’m taking you to-” she makes a disgusted face, curling her lips back and giving a little shiver. “Jiraiya.”

Oh, wow. She really was serious, then. “Okay,” he says, giving her a bright smile, just to watch her scowl when he doesn’t object. “Since Tsunade apparently knows where Jiraiya is, we can get him on our side, too.”

Itachi raises his hand like an academy student with a question.

“Yes, Itachi.”

“We need to do something about Tobi.”

Kakashi tugs his hands through his hair, tempted to pull it all out. “I forgot about him. What do you think? You’re the one who knows him best.”

“I think… he has his own agenda in Konoha. He’ll use the chaos that we create to carry it out.”

“What do you think the chances are that his agenda includes killing me?”

“Mm. We can’t rule it out.”

Kakashi’s sick of having the whole world after him. The Hokage, the village, even his missing-nin traveling companion. “New objective for you, Itachi. See if you can coax it out of him when he shows back up.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Surprisingly, it feels good to hear that. It’s nice to have a team, people to watch his back.

“Tsunade-hime, how long do you think it will take us to reach Jiraiya?”

“Hmm. A week, maybe. So I have a week to prepare myself to punch him in the throat as hard as I can.”

“Oookay, thank you. Tenzou, do you think you could come with us, for your seal?”

He shakes his head. “I have to report back.”

“I’m sorry,” Kakashi says, deflated. “But we’ll bring him with us, and he can take a look afterward.”

Tenzou thanks him, and they sit there for a while, Tsunade drunk and mumbling to herself, and Kakashi, Tenzou, and Itachi making small talk, but all with their own things to think about that keep their eyes staring into the distance.

“Tenzou, you didn’t mention, the people Danzou’s having you watch, what about Maito Gai?”

Tenzou shakes his head. “Haven’t heard anything, senpai.”

“Ah. Okay.”

Kakashi stares back into the distance and slides his teeth over his tongue. It doesn’t feel any different; he can’t even tell there’s a seal there. It seems he’s ensnared himself again without even knowing. He didn’t know what was coming, but he should have. He should have been more careful with his defiance of the seal. He should have been more careful when Danzou approached him, should have known he couldn’t outsmart him. All those years ago, he should have known to slow down. His life would be perfect, none of anything would have happened if he’d just taken it easy, if he took the Jounin exam next year when he was twenty instead of when he was eleven.

The war would’ve—it would’ve been fine without him. Maybe, if he’d been a Chunin when the nine-tails attacked, he would’ve been posted at a desk position and no one would have come to keep him from helping sensei. He wouldn’t have botched the Kannabi Bridge operation and led Obito to his death, wouldn’t have had a strong enough attack for Rin to kill herself with.

Itachi speaks up. “How is Sasuke? Is he happy? Who takes care of him?”

Tenzou grimaces and looks hesitantly at Kakashi before continuing. “He… there’s no one taking care of him. He lives by himself in the Uchiha compound. I can’t tell if he’s happy; the kids at the academy like him, but when he’s at home he has nightmares.”

“Oh,” Itachi says dully. “I see. Thank you, Tenzou.”

They sit in silence for a little longer, the only interruption now Tsunade’s snores.

“Okay,” Kakashi finally says, standing up and brushing himself off. “That’s enough waiting, I think. Let’s go find Jiraiya.” He nudges Tsunade with his foot, then, when that doesn’t work, dumps water on her with a jutsu. 

Tsunade leads them, alternating between angry determined running and slow meandering dance steps to her off-key rendition of the classic “Kunoichi’s Trick.” Tenzou stays with them because they’re going in the general direction of Konoha. Kakashi rips pieces off of his old clothes to fashion into earplugs and offers them to him and Itachi to drown out Tsunade, but does not offer any to Tobi when he pops into existence next to them an hour in.

What a nice sight they must make: the assassin of the Hokage, the infamous murderer of the Uchiha, the awkward teenager who is also the only living wood-style user, and whatever the hell Tobi is, all following after the drunken dance of the Slug Princess.

Despite that, Kakashi smiles; minus Tobi, he couldn’t be more grateful for their ragtag team.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I last updated, I have taken two PRAXIS exams, the LSAT, and have done a lot of other important and time-consuming things. I have also done less important things, like written four separate one shots for hawks week over in the bnha fandom, which y'all should totally read (here on my ao3).
> 
> I have also made a [tumblr](https://pbjamas.tumblr.com/) dedicated to anime. rip. i am 23 and have not had an anime blog since i was 15. but, i guess it's fine. in the words of yorozuya gin-san, "the best way to live a full life is to be a child no matter how old you are."
> 
> Next update will also take awhile bc school is KILLING ME but not as long as this one took me lol. thank u for ur patience <3
> 
> NEXT TIME ON RENEGADE: Tsunade and Jiraiya have a conversation they've been avoiding. Jiraiya talks to the group about Minato. Tobi's acting pretty sus o.o
> 
> I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter, let me know what you think!!!


	10. All Jokes are Put Aside and Some Actual Work is Done

For some reason, Kakashi is not expecting to find Jiraiya at the top of a mountain meditating.

Maybe it’s because everything he knows about Jiraiya suggests he is a man who couldn’t live without his vices, or maybe it’s because Jiraiya tends to be so loud that Kakashi assumed he lived off of pure attention. If that’s the case, he must be starving out here.

He can’t deny that he’s a little bit jealous, though. After so long travelling with Tobi, the idea of living on a mountaintop all by himself is very appealing.

He refuses to admit to himself that he’d probably hate it; Tenzou only left their group three days ago and Kakashi already misses him. He also misses Gai, and when he and Itachi inevitably part ways, he’ll probably miss him, too. After they take down Danzou, Tsunade will be the Hokage, so he’ll probably still be seeing a lot of her, at least.

The thought of going back to the village settles over him like lead. Maybe it won’t be so bad when Tsunade is the Hokage, though. She’s always had the charisma of a leader, and she cares, like Kakashi does. They seem to have a view in common: individuals are important. Tsunade left the village because of how much she had lost; she has to understand what Kakashi does: that sometimes the cost is too much.

Why did Jiraiya leave the village? Is this where he’s been the whole time?

“Jiraiya?” Tsunade calls out.

Jiraiya half-heartedly opens up one eye from where he’s sitting cross-legged on a tree stump. Then, when he sees Tsunade, both eyes snap open, wide and disbelieving for a second before he gets them back to normal and puts on his cocky grin.

“Oh, _hey_ Princess, I knew you’d come to see me,” he croons, getting up off the stump. He takes a step, then stumbles and trips.

Tsunade turns to Kakashi and Itachi. “He’s said, what, three words? And I already need a drink.”

After a week of dealing with drunk Tsunade, Kakashi’s about at his limit.

“Fine then. Itachi and I will talk with him. _You_ can babysit Tobi.”

All of their eyes slide to Tobi, who squeals and waves off their glances. “Stop it, you’re all looking at me! I’m blushing!”

Tsunade grumbles. “I- fine. Whatever.” She shuffles her feet toward Jiraiya in a show of reluctance, but when he stands up to hold her in a hug, she holds him tightly back. “Jiraiya, you bastard. I missed you.”

“You too, you harpy.”

“Just… shut up, for once in your sorry life.”

“You know, I could make my mouth busy doing something el-”

Tsunade pulls away and shakes her head. “Sensei’s dead.”

Jiraiya’s eyes widen, and he stands frozen. “He’s… dead?”

“That’s why I came.”

Jiraiya looks lost for a moment longer, then his eyes go stormy. “It was Orochimaru, wasn’t it? I don’t care if we were friends once, he crossed the line ages ago. This is my fault, for not stopping him sooner. Tsunade, that’s why you’re here, right? We’re going to put a stop to him?”

“It wasn’t Orochimaru.”

“Well, who was it, then? Either way, you’re here because we’re going after them together, right? Look, I _know_ you don’t care about me, or anyone, anymore, but you cared about Sensei, right? There’s no way you-”

A loud slap cuts him off.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Tsunade growls. “You don’t get to say that about me.”

Well. This is fun. Kakashi sends a glance to Itachi and Tobi. Itachi looks mildly uncomfortable, but Tobi is literally squirming. If it weren’t for the fact that Kakashi was also squirming on the inside, he’d love to see both of them so uncomfortable. But now, he just tells Itachi _I’m out_ with his eyes and slinks back into the trees. 

“Kakashi!” Tsunade snaps. “Get back here!”

He slinks back out of the trees.

Kakashi regrets his attempt at escape because it takes her attention off of Jiraiya and puts it on him, bad mood and all.

“Are you kidding me, Kakashi? We came all the way out here and we’re subjecting ourselves to Jiraiya’s presence-”

“Hey!” Jiraiya protests.

“-for _you_ , and you’re just going to sneak off like a coward because you can’t face a little conflict! Get over here!”

He walks over, positions himself in a slouch, and flicks his fingers in a wave. “Yo.”

“Don’t _yo_ me!” Tsunade says and tries to smack him, but he ducks easily out of the way. She sighs. “Kakashi’s why we’re here. The basic story is: he was framed for killing the Hokage, he’s a missing-nin now, he’s got a seal on his tongue that’s going to kill him if you don’t fix it for him, and we’re on our way to assassinate Danzou.”

Jiraiya’s eyes are wide. “That’s… that’s a lot. Danzou?”

“The new Hokage,” Itachi supplies, and Jiraiya’s eyes go wider.

“Uchiha Itachi?” he asks, disbelieving, turning to glare at Tsunade. “What sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?”

Tsunade snorts unkindly. “Better than hiding myself away on a mountain and waiting while the world goes to shit!”

Jiraiya reels back, then steps forward to jab a finger at Tsunade. “You- You- Gah!” He throws his hands up and paces away then back toward Tsunade. “You run off to drink yourself to an early death, and that’s only _if_ one of your creditors doesn’t kill you first! And you say _I’m_ running away!”

“Oh, _Jiraiya’s_ lecturing me on sobriety! Better listen, because he’s the most respected and decorous ninja in all the land! The picture of maturity!”

“You left first!” Jiraiya shouts, his face red and eyes showing his hurt. “You left first! We were a team! We were legendary! I _loved_ you! And you _left_!

Itachi coughs, but Tsunade barrels right on without paying him any notice.

“NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU!” Tsunade screams, redfaced. Her fists are clenched, her left held behind her ready to swing. Then, suddenly, she deflates. With a tired hitch in her breath, she runs a hand over her face. “God, look at us. Sensei’s dead, and we’re screaming at each other like twelve year olds again. He’d be ashamed.”

Jiraiya chuckles hoarsely. “Nah, don’t say that. He’d be annoyed, roll his eyes maybe, but he’d just laugh at us and give us one of those teamwork exercises.” Jiraiya sits back down on his tree stump, and Tsunade joins him. She puts her face in her hands while Jiraiya lightly pats her back. There’s a silence of reconciliation for about three seconds, until Tobi starts giggling.

“Don’t mind our idiot friend,” Kakashi explains to Jiraiya. In an exaggerated whisper he adds, “the mask does something funny, breathing in all that paint, you know.”

“It’s not the paint that made me crazy,” Tobi says. “It’s you. Can’t stand you.”

Kakashi puts on a patronizing smile. “Yes, I know, Tobi.” He steps forward on impulse to ruffle Tobi’s hair, and Tobi doesn’t move, too shocked, probably. “Aw, my cute little missing-nin friend, all full of hatred and everything. Jiraiya,” he says, stepping back. “Could you take a look at the seal on my tongue, please?”

Jiraiya agrees and shoos everyone else away at Kakashi’s request. Kakashi sits respectfully on the stump like an academy student, but his feet don’t dangle like they always did back then. He slips off his mask to show Jiraiya, who sucks in a breath through his teeth when he sees it.

“Look, I’m not gonna lie, kid. It’s looking really bad. I’m guessing this chokes you when you try to say certain things? And it’s been escalating?”

“Yeah.”

Jiraiya shook his head and pursed his lips. “It’s attached to your nerves, not your vocal chords. I can’t remove it without cutting out your tongue or severing the nerve with chakra.”

Tsunade’s already told him as much. He blinks and clicks his mouth shut.

“And,” says Jiraiya, “what happened to your face? I know you didn’t have that scar before.”

Kakashi pulls up his mask before answering. “There was another seal– a partner seal. I had to burn it off. “

Jiraiya sucks in a breath. “So that was… that’s _your_ handprint then.”

Kakashi nods.

“I can’t believe Konoha would do that. God, Kakashi, what have they done to you?” Jiraiya sets a hand lightly on Kakashi’s head. “You know, when I met you, you were like three feet tall. Minato brought you to the chuunin exam and I thought, who is this shrimp? You were so cute. And now… I think he’d yell at me for letting all of this happen to you.”

“What, I’m not cute anymore?”

“Hah! Still as bratty as you were back then.” Jiraiya looks out at the landscape below them. “Minato loved you guys. He’d come to me all glowing, and he’d tell me that you smiled at Obito, or that Rin started learning medical ninjustu, and I swear I’d never seen him happier. Well, until Kushina came along, I guess, but you guys meant a lot to him.” Jiraiya looks back over at Kakashi with sad eyes, and Kakashi’s suddenly self-conscious about his scars—the slash over his eye and the fingerprints poking above his mask.

Jiraiya scrubs a hand over his face and sighs. “Guess I’m getting distracted. Let’s see your seal again.”

Kakashi tugs his mask down again and presses his hands into the tree stump to keep them from twitching as Jiraiya pokes the seal with a stick. 

“Okay,” Jiraiya says finally. “I think I can prevent it from killing you, but I can’t remove it.”

With a nod, Kakashi says, “Do what you have to.”

Jiraiya creates a level workspace with an earth jutsu and picks up a big brush to start creating a big seal. Kakashi doesn’t offer to help, instead trying to puzzle out what it is Jiraiya’s trying to do with the seal on the workspace. It just looks like a containment seal, in case something goes wrong, maybe. Jiraiya sends Kakashi to get Tsunade to help him out with the procedure.

When he comes back, Jiraiya positions him cross-legged in the middle of the seal. 

“Okay, Kakashi, you stay still. Tsunade, I’m going to have you create a chakra block on his tongue. I’m just going to make a couple of marks with ink. What it’ll do is trap the seal to only your tongue instead of affecting your whole body. Now, tell me when you’re ready.”

Kakashi’s not ready, lost in the memory of Danzou roughly yanking his mask down and putting the seal on his tongue without a word, then shoving him off to Torture and Interrogation. Why had Kakashi just let them puppet him like that? Why hadn’t he done anything? Danzou’s genjutsu must have been messing with him. There’s no way he’d let anyone just yank his mask down; he can’t have been in his right mind.

A slimy shudder runs up his spine at the phantom feeling of Danzou’s light but scratchy fingers on his face as he tilts Kakashi’s chin to draw the seal on his tongue. He rubs his neck to get rid of the feeling.

“Just a moment,” Kakashi says past the shudder and the urge to curl his body inward. He pulls his mask back up and leaves his hand there covering his face as he brings himself back under control. When the thought of Jiraiya running a brush over his tongue only makes him tighten his shoulders instead of pulling in his legs, he pulls his mask back down and tells them, “Ready.”

Overall, it takes less than a minute. Jiraiya adds two or three small marks, then tells Kakashi to try to trigger the seal. He can’t say anything about Danzou, but it’s not choking him, and he’s not blacking out, so he counts it as a success. 

After securing his mask, he thanks Jiraiya and Tsunade.

“You’re welcome, kid,” says Jiraiya. “Look. Come to me anytime you need anything. I owe it to Minato, okay?”

“Minato?” says Tobi’s squeaky voice. Jiraiya swivels toward him with a kunai out, but Tsunade and Kakashi just roll their eyes.

“My student,” explains Jiraiya.

“Wow! You taught the Fourth Hokage? That’s so cool, he was so strong. Not strong enough though, heh.”

Jiraiya's not used to Tobi like Kakashi and Tsunade are; he takes offense and there’s a dangerous flaring of chakra as wind starts to swirl in his palm and whips at his hair. “He was the _strongest_ ,” Jiraiya growls.

“Mmm… was he really though? He didn’t really even put up that much of a fight!” Tobi says this gleefully, the glint of his eye through the mask hole focused on Kakashi even while he taunts Jiraiya.

“What are you-” Jiraiya growls, but Tsunade, of all people, stops him. 

“He’s just trying to get a rise out of you,” she explains with a hand on his shoulder. With a glare at Tobi, she adds, “That’s enough. I’ve put up with you for weeks, but you’re only an annoyance.”

Tobi mimes being hit in the heart, exaggeratedly pulling his hands away from his chest to look at blood that’s not there. “But- but-” he says in a hurt voice. Then, he bursts out in cackles. Kakashi opens his Sharingan, anticipating the need for some de-escalation.

“Look,” Tobi tells them with a hint of a pout in his voice. “I’m just saying, it’s really no fun to kill a hokage if I never get to brag to anyone about it!”

In a flash, Jiraiya’s Rasengan has left a crater where Tobi used to be standing and Tsunade’s earth jutsu arrives there just after, swallowing the ground where Tobi would have been. Leaves spin in a dance around them, torn from the trees by Jiraiya’s wind chakra. Dirt thrown from the ground by Tsunade falls over them like rain.

Tsunade and Jiraiya didn’t see anything, but Kakashi, with his Sharingan open and on high alert, knows exactly what happened. He saw Tobi’s sharingan spin, turn into the Mangekyou, and the spinning drew in his body as he disappeared.

The Mangekyou, though. Kakashi’s spent hours draining his chakra looking at his own in the mirror, so he can say with certainty that Tobi’s looks exactly like his. He pushes chakra through Obito’s eye. There’s a weird sucking sensation, then all of a sudden, he’s falling to his knees in pitch black.

It might be stupid and he might be grasping at straws, but he shouts the only thing that comes to his mind: “Obito!”

“Bakashi,” Tobi says in the deep voice that Kakashi heard when he first talked to Itachi at the campfire while feigning sleep. “You’ve finally figured out the Kamui jutsu. I was always going to have to kill you before we made it to Konoha. You’re complicating things a bit by being ahead of schedule, but, honestly? I’m not all that disappointed– I’ve been looking forward to this for _years_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a little bit shorter because I decided to make the entire Obito fight next chapter instead of splitting it between the two. we're about 4 chapters away from the end, kids. It's gonna get a little darker from here on out.
> 
> WHY is my writing getting worse as the story goes on shouldn't it be the opposite ;_;


	11. Come Dance With Your Old Teammate in Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no jokes, FOR REAL THIS TIME
> 
> i've also updated the tags.

Tobi is nothing like Obito. Tobi is selfish and cruel. Tobi is trying to _kill_ him.

“You can’t be Obito,” Kakashi says, his heel leaving a ripple in the blackness where he’s unconsciously taken a step back.

Obito takes one step forward, keeping them the same space apart. “Can’t I? Why not, Kakashi? Is it because I’m too good at ninjutsu? Too competent to be little crybaby Obito?” He pulls the mask off his face and throws it down, shattering it. The darkness swallows the pieces and the sound; there’s no rattle as the pieces skitter and still.  
“Or is it because you like your friends better when they’re dead so you can just sit at the memorial stone instead of being required to actually _be_ friends with them?” 

He smiles slowly, the sides of his mouth stretching until his skin starts to creak. “It’s much easier to sit on your ass and _cry_ , isn’t it? Ha!” A laugh moves through his whole body as he jerks forward and lifts himself to his tiptoes. 

Kakashi stands frozen, the blackness closing in on him, muffling the ringing in his ears until all he hears is his own hushed breath. Tobi’s voice pushes through the dark and loses its echo and its sting. The words hit Kakashi with a dull thud in his chest.

Tobi’s still laughing.

“Why did you kill Rin? To spite me?” He shakes his head and throws his arms out. “No, you wouldn’t. You may be cruel, but you’re not _spiteful,_ you’re just _sad_.

Obito is Tobi again, fluttering hands and squeals. “Poor kakashi, he’s sad that he killed his only friend!” He gasps behind his hand. “Oh no, did I hit a sore spot!” He walks toward Kakashi.

Finally, Kakashi steels himself and sets his feet in a fighting stance.

“Obito.” He hopes his voice doesn’t sound as feeble as he feels.

Obito’s voice is dark and low again. “Shut up! You don’t even get to say my _name_ after what you did to Rin!”

“Obito,” he says again, less shakily. The word is heavy and cold in the back of his throat.

“No,” Obito says softly, looking down. “You’re not spiteful. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re a thoughtless killing machine, huh? They tell you, kill Rin. For the village. And you, good little Kakashi, always ready to lick their boots after they drove your father to suicide, what did you say? Yes, sir! Of course, sir! Those who break the rules are trash, _sir!_ ”

Obito laughs hysterically, throwing his head back, then smiled and looked him in the eye.

“Anything for the village, ne, Kakashi-kun?”

Kakashi jumps forward, slashing at him with a kunai.

Obito ducks, flickers away. “And look!” he laughs. “You killed Rin for a village that hates you! They’ve branded you, exiled you! Even after you did their dirty work! This is just how the shinobi world works. The thing is, Kakashi, I… kind of feel… _bad_ for you?” He laughs and disappears, warping into the blackness behind Kakashi. Obito sweeps a leg down low and Kakashi jumps, forming hand seals in the air so that when he lands and slams his hands on the ground, a wall of earth sprouts up under Obito’s right foot and forces him to change footing. From there, Kakashi attacks with ninjutsu. It’s always best to start with a slight advantage, and what Kakashi doesn’t have in chakra right now, he’ll have to make up for in other ways. One thing he’s learned from Gai is to go for his opponent’s footing; that way, they’ll be struggling the whole fight to regain it.

And he can’t forget—”Obito. Did you really kill Minato-sensei?” he asks as he jumps back.

“I did!” Obito shouts back “I had to.”

Kakashi answers at his normal volume. “Why?”

Obito just screams and throws a Great Fireball Jutsu at him. It’s not hard to dodge, and he manages it without chakra. Kakashi has maybe one big jutsu left if he wants to be able to warp himself out of this dimension later, or fifteen small substitution or flicker jutsu, maybe three or four mid-level jutsu. One chidori. Obito’s Sharingan is open, draining his energy, but he wouldn’t survive without it.

He spins out of his dodge and uses the momentum to slam a kunai into Obito—Obito brings up an arm in just enough time to block it, and it lodges there. While Obito yanks it out, Kakashi flickers behind him and charges a different kunai with electricity. Obito leaps away before it can cut him, but the current still hits him and he gasps. 

In that small moment, Kakashi chooses not to go after him. He’s wide open for attack—it would be a simple kill—but he can’t. Won’t. Instead, he uses the moment to fling out ninja wire in a web. There are no surfaces for it to cling to, but Kakashi keeps hold of one end, and if he sends chakra through it, he can snap it taut whenever he wants.

“I don’t believe you,” he says to Obito. “You wouldn’t kill Minato-sensei, you’re just trying to get to me.”

“You don’t know me anymore, Bakashi,” Obito hisses from behind him. Kakashi whirls and jumpsback. “You don’t know what I would and wouldn’t do. Rin was the only reason I was living, you know? I was found by this old man.” He sends another fire jutsu at Kakashi, who jumps out of the way, but the heat sears his face, sparks catching onto his mask. The next fire jutsu Obito sends iss twice as hot, and from just proximity, Kakashi’s mask and robe catch fire. He tries to tug the mask away from his face, but it just crumbles to ash in his hand.

“Funny thing,” Obito continues, not noticing or not caring that the mask is gone, “he called himself Madara, and I mean, he was obviously an Uchiha, so I kinda had to believe him. He healed me up, gave me these weird new plant limbs. But he gave me the creeps! He kept saying, _no, young Uchiha, you can’t go back. The world isn’t worth saving, your friends aren’t really your friends, stay with me, let’s start our own world._ And you know what I told him? I said, no, fuck off. You don’t know what you’re talking about! Kakashi came back for me! They’ll find me; they’re my friends! I told him that he didn’t understand how Rin was the realest, most genuinely kind person I’d ever met! I told him how Kakashi was an asshole but me and Rin were helping him change!”

Obito isn’t attacking any more, just advancing toward Kakashi with slow, steady steps. “And then,” he coughs out a despairing, wet laugh as tears obstruct his voice, “and _then_ , I’m finally strong enough to leave. To come home. And the first thing I see”—he laughs again, a small, broken sound—”is _you,_ with your hand through Rin’s chest. With your stupid jutsu that’s not even possible without _my_ Sharingan! So I run back to Madara. He says, now you see. And I did. I did whatever he asked. And he asked me to kill Minato, so I did. It was necessary for our new world. I attacked the village. I wanted to kill you too, but the hokage kept you away.”

Kakashi is frozen, can’t move, as Obito comes closer and closer, as Obito kicks him in the gut and knocks him over. He sprawls on the ground, cowering. “And now, what a perfect opportunity! Kakashi’s on a little quest! I can go to Konoha, let him sneak me in, steal the jinchuriki, and kill him, all in one neat little package.”

The panic that goes through him at the mention of Sensei’s son finally gets him to scramble to his feet. 

“But I just couldn’t help myself, you know? Messing with you was always so _fun_.” Obito lights up his palm with fire. It’s chakra thread, as concentrated as the Rasengan or the Chidori. Instead of chirping and screeching, like Kakashi’s lightning, it spits and crackles. It looks and sounds warm. It fits the Obito that Kakashi remembers. Bright, fiery with determination, but a sense of calm that came from within—this Obito is not like that at all.

He takes one step closer, grins, and says, “bye, Kakashi,” as he smashes the fire into his chest.

Time freezes. It burns, worse than the handprint on his face. Kakashi’s finally managed to make himself move, but not fast enough, and the fire scatters over him. It scorches his chest, but he’s made it just far enough back that it hasn’t cauterized a hole through his lungs. It makes a wall between him and Obito, blocking their view of each other. The tear that drips from Obito’s eye sizzles and evaporates before even making it halfway down his unmasked cheek.

The heat spurs him into action and he pulses chakra through the wire he set up. As the fire dissipates, he sees that it’s tangled around Obito. Without pause, he forms a chidori—it whistles in his ears and tells him, _no, stop_ , but he can’t. Won’t.

And then his arm is elbow-deep in Obito’s chest, just to the right of his heart.

“Ow,” says Obito, gazing wistfully past Kakashi into the darkness.

Kakashi’s hand shakes and spasms so violently that it splatters Obito’s blood over his burnt cloak. With a gentle urgency, he pulls his arm out, catches Obito, and lowers them both to the ground so Obito’s head rests in his lap.

“Kaka..shi…” Obito gurgles.

Kakashi swallows the lump in his throat to answer with a clipped “Yeah?”

“It’s kinda… funny.”

His fingers tremble and twitch as he brings his non-bloody hand to wipe a tear off of Obito’s face.

“Y- yeah?” he says again, but it lodges in his throat and stays stuck there.

Obito takes a labored breath. “Sh’s… cryng. Looks… r’l sad.”

The only answer Kakashi can give him is a tear from Obito’s own eye that splashes onto his face.

“Sh s’s… says… y’can have th’other eye. Take it. ‘S yours.” He gurgles a cough that stains his teeth with blood.

Kakashi shakes his head desperately. “No,” he begs.

“Hm,” says Obito, sliding his head to the side. “C’n y’do… a fire? ‘S cold. Rin has a fire. She s… says. She dsn’t hate me,”

Kakashi nods and uses the last of his chakra to make a small flame and hold it close to Obito. As Obito’s face twitches into a dying smile, another tear falls from Kakashi’s face to Obito’s. A warm huff of a laugh leaves Obito’s lips and he whispers, “Thank you… Kaka… shi…“ With a sigh, Obito closes his eye. After a few more breaths, he slackens and his head lolls to the side.

Kakashi doesn’t move, keeping the flame in his hand long after Obito stops being able to see it.

\----------------------------

He wakes up in blackness. Even though he knows he passed out from chakra exhaustion, he feels warm chakra buzzing in his fingers, so he summons Pakkun. 

Pakkun says nothing at first, just stares, wide-eyed, then scrunches up his face as his eyes start to water. “Oh, Kakashi.”

Kakashi rolls back over to his side, facing away from Obito’s corpse, and stares blankly into the nothingness as Pakkun runs over and curls up against his chest. Pakkun’s heartbeat is quicker than his, and Pakkun is warmer than him. Pakkun is soft, and caring. The blackness calls to Kakashi, trying to absorb him one wisp at a time, but Pakkun’s small breaths keep him tethered.

“That was Obito,” he tells Pakkun blandly.

Pakkun’s voice wavers as he says, “Oh.”

They stay there for a long time. When Kakashi’s breath hitches, Pakkun says nothing.

It’s nice to be surrounded by nothing. In the past, when Kakashi was trying to deal with other tragedies, he couldn’t escape the sun or the moon or the clamor of ninja life, not even for an hour. He couldn’t escape into sleep because the violence followed him there. Here, though, there’s nothing. Only Obito’s body behind him, and he doesn’t turn to look.

“Let’s go,” he finally says, standing up and tearing off part of his ruined cloak to tie around his face.

He reappears into stark sunlight, and immediately, Tsunade shouts, “Kakashi! It’s been two days, where have you-“

“Tobi’s dead,” he announces.

“Kakashi,” Tsunade says, deadly calm. “Let me look at that.”

He walks gingerly over to where Tsunade is waiting by a tree stump and he sits down. Pakkun trots up to sit next to him.

Instead of looking at his burns like he was expecting, Tsunade puts a hand under his chin and tilts his head up. She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a controlled exhale. “Okay. Tell me. Where did you get a second Sharingan?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things that made this chapter take forever:  
> 1\. mha brainrot—can't stop thinking about hawks and i'm not sorry  
> 2\. everyone was commenting "obito needs to see sense! Can't wait until Kakashi talk-no-jutus him into being friends!" and I was like......uh.....because the plan from the very beginning was always to have kakashi kill obito lol
> 
> NEXT CHAPTER: Itachi might be the only person who can relate to Kakashi right now. And Danzou doesn't care about Kakashi's personal crisis—on to Konoha we go. Four chapters left, folks. Maybe three if I decide one of the splits is unnecessary.
> 
> AND HERE is where I BEG FOR COMMENTS: I was kind of trying to accomplish something specific with this chapter, would you please tell me your emotional reactions? ty <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Heretical Thoughts (I am a Renegade)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26745490) by [Akarius_Eroxus_Orisma0315](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akarius_Eroxus_Orisma0315/pseuds/Akarius_Eroxus_Orisma0315)




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